World Cup Displayed 1.5 Gambling/Prediction Market Logs per Minute

Viewers of this summer’s FIFA men’s World Cup were exposed to 1.5 gambling and prediction market logos per minute, according to a joint study by the University of Bristol and University of Oxford.

The study examined advertising across five harmful commodity categories: unhealthy food and beverages, alcohol, gambling, prediction markets and cryptocurrencies. A total of 6,429 gambling logos were counted as on display across the 104 matches that were played in the US, Canada and Mexico between June 11 and July 19. This accounted for 6.9% of logos of harmful brands that were shown at matches.

Prevalence of Betano

The gambling brand that appeared the most was Betano, which is licensed in Great Britain and was an official tournament supporter of the World Cup for Europe and South America.

The Betano logo appeared in every match, accounting for 91.1% of all gambling advertising with a total of 5,859. The remaining 8.9% of logos came from Caliente, Matchbook, Winner.mx and Confia. From those operators, only Matchbook is licensed in Great Britain.

However, gambling advertisements were severely outnumbered by ads for unhealthy food and beverages, where 65,722 logos were counted, accounting for 70.4% of the harmful commodity logos counted in the study.

Logos advertising prediction markets totalled 9,360, making up a 10% share of the study. There were 9,266 logos advertising alcohol (9.9%) and 2,632 cryptocurrency brand logos (2.8%).

The prediction markets total stemmed from FIFA’s partnership with ADI Predictstreet, with the operator acting as the official prediction markets partner for the tournament. Prediction markets have proved to be particularly popular in the US, partially as they can be operated under a license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the state regulator.

When combining gambling and prediction markets, 15,789 logos were seen, representing 16.9% of all harmful commodity logos. According to the study, at least one harmful commodity logo was visible for 39.3 hours of live play, averaging almost 23 minutes per match. A total of 22.8% of live play contained harmful commodity ads. In total, there were 267 billion logo impressions in the UK alone.

Link to House of Lords Committee

The study was co-authored by Dr Raffaello Rossi, who is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bristol and gave evidence to the House of Lords Liaison Committee, which recommended the UK government ban gambling advertising in its entirety, arguing this would meaningfully advance the government’s plans to reduce gambling harms.

A report was released following three panels that were heard by the committee in June. Evidence was provided by three campaigners, three industry representatives and three regulatory figures. The resulting report found gambling harm remains a major public health issue.

UK gambling advertising framework

Gambling advertising was liberalised in the UK following the passing of the Gambling Act 2005. Prior to this, advertising was restricted to bingo, the football pools, the National Lottery and other permitted lotteries, which were all permitted to advertise on television and radio.

Advertising and marketing were areas that were broadly left untouched by the 2023 Gambling White Paper, as up to this point, advertising has primarily been restricted by self-regulation.

In 2019, the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling imposed a whistle-to-whistle ban on gambling adverts showing during live sporting events prior to the 9pm watershed.