Lords Committee Hears Extent Of Football Gambling Advertising Problem

Football gambling advertising has become a prevalent concern among younger bettors, and tougher action must be taken, a House of Lords Select Committee heard.

Yesterday, several industry experts presented their findings in a follow-up committee session, discussing the social and economic impact of gambling ads. And the extent of the problem has been laid bare.

Creating a ‘tidal wave of normalisation’

In an age where gambling ads now appear on multiple formats, including television and social media, fears have heightened over children becoming more exposed.

James Grimes, who was representing Gambling With Lives, a charity set up for families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, used the World Cup as a prime example of those affected watching games on TV. His findings revealed roughly a 16-24% higher gambling frequency among those watching games on ITV compared to the BBC, where there were no ads.

Expressing his concerns, Grimes said:

“There are many more adverts on many more different platforms and what that’s caused is this absolute tidal wave of normalisation where young people associate gambling as being completely safe, harmless fun without any understanding of the risks involved.”

Advertising put on the back foot

Although some steps have been taken to limit the impact of gambling advertising, such as the voluntary ban on front-of-shirt sponsorships in the Premier League from next season, there is no disputing the impact paid-for gambling ads are having.

Research showed around £2 billion is now being spent by licensed UK betting companies each year. A recent study also indicated approximately 60% of paid-for gambling ads breached the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) code to protect people under the age of 25 from being targeted.

Other industry experts, such as Raffaello Rossi from the University of Bristol Business School, intimated that gambling ads were now more “covert”. Within his research, he discovered gambling ads were four times more appealing to children than adults, underlying a fundamental problem of younger people not understanding what gambling advertising actually entails.

Regression from 2020 report

In the previous Committee meeting, several chief executives of the UK’s biggest betting operators raised the notion of problem gambling being a public health issue and that urgent action was needed.

Within the report, it was stated that the liberalisation of gambling by the Gambling Act of 2005, combined with the increased adoption of smartphones and soft-touch regulation, were core ingredients in creating a “perfect storm of 24/7 gambling”.

Among the original key recommendations set out by the Committee were that the NHS should treat problem gambling as a common mental health disorder, and that advertising should test harm indicators to assess the impact it would likely have on children. However, there doesn’t appear to have been much progress, with Grimes suggesting “things had got a lot worse” since that report.

Call to arms

The evidence compiled on football gambling advertising has been somewhat damning. And Will Prochaska, the director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, insists the government needs to get a grip on the matter.

He said:

“The public health argument is clear. If you allow liberal gambling advertising you end up in Britain with an estimated 1.4 million people at any given time who are experiencing problem gambling, families ruined, high streets ravaged, children who are addicted — this is undoubtedly a public health crisis.

“If you reduce gambling advertising and you reduce gambling consumption, you will start to rein that in and you will start to see a reduction in harm.”