My toddler has been learning his colours recently and has loved nothing more than the praise he gets when he gets it right. We were watching football at the weekend and he exclaimed “red!”. But it wasn’t the pitch or the jerseys he was pointing to. It was the brightly coloured banner around the stadium, emblazoned across it: the name of a high-street bookmaker.
After too many years of waiting, the Government has finally launched its white paper review of the gambling industry. Policy reviews tend not to set the pulse racing, but this one has the potential to make a real difference for a very vulnerable group of people, and to reshape UK sports in the process.
Sports and gambling have a long history together and the two industries are deeply intertwined. The Premier League draws in around £60m in revenue from betting advertising; meanwhile, football accounts for almost half of the £2.3bn in revenue generated by UK online betting.
Most of these bets don’t lead to mortgage foreclosure, job loss, marriage breakdown, or any of the other unfortunate circumstances associated with experiencing gambling harm. But for a sizeable minority, sports gambling is a serious issue.
Over 400,000 people in England experience active harm from gambling. That means outcomes that compromise health, relationships or livelihood. A further two million people – and 30 per cent of those who bet on football – are at risk of gambling harms in future. Unsurprisingly, this issue has a disproportionate impact on people who are already struggling. People with gambling problems are more likely to be unemployed, live in a deprived area and experience generally poorer health.
The UK Gambling Act was passed almost 20 years ago, before the proliferation of smart phones, social media and easy online payments – so current laws just aren’t reflective of modern gambling behaviours.
The Government’s long-awaited white paper is targeted at bringing national gambling regulations into the 21st century. But while many of the recommendations are welcome – particularly restrictions on the amount young people can bet and an industry levy to fund gambling research and treatment – there are some serious oversights when it comes to the beautiful game.
For instance, one of the key recommendations is targeted at the Premier League, suggesting a voluntary removal of gambling logos from the front of football players’ shirts on match days.
This is good to see – but it’s a drop in the ocean. There will still be gambling ads on other parts of players’ kits, there can still be ads on training kits and on the pitch itself. Gambling sponsors are mentioned almost three times a minute during televised football matches – that’s once every 21 seconds.
Meanwhile, lower leagues – such as the English Football League – are even more dependent on gambling advertising, and these teams have no known plans to distance themselves from such sponsors.
So what else should the UK government do?
Ultimately, the white paper recommendations are most impactful where they follow the evidence around the psychology of gambling and exploitative marketing tactics.
The Behavioural Insights Team – the organisation unofficially known as the “Nudge Unit” – recently set up a special taskforce to unpick the psychology fueling harmful gambling behaviours and to propose policy changes that could nudge people and industry towards different choices.
Take deposit amounts, for example. Our research shows that people’s decisions as to how much to deposit into their account are guided by the pre-set numbers suggested by the website. We found that the higher the suggested amount, the more people are likely to deposit. So why not just remove the default altogether and allow consumers to make an unprompted choice about how much to place on a match outcome?
It’s also vital that gamblers can see their activity across all of the sites they use. Our research found that up to 86 per cent of high-risk gamblers used at least five sites in the previous six months. This is a disaster for people at risk of harm – they should be able to set a single limit that aggregates all of the sites they use. In an interview setting, one participant said: “I would love [this]. I wouldn’t mind because that would actually save my money, would save my life maybe.”
It’s important to note that the UK can and should do better on this. The Belgian government will ban gambling advertising on television, social media and public signs from July, including a later prohibition on ads in stadiums and sport sponsorship. Estonia is soon expected to follow suit.
For too long, gambling – and football gambling in particular – has been the Wild West of consumer regulation in the UK. The market has entirely transformed since 2005 and consumer protection just hasn’t kept pace.
The Government’s new proposals are a step in the right direction, but don’t go far enough for people at risk of gambling harm or in reining in the worst impulses of the gambling industry. It’s time for stronger regulations to safeguard the vulnerable and make the beautiful game fairer, safer and truly beautiful once again.
Aisling Ní Chonaire is Head of the Gambling Policy & Research Unit at the Behavioural Insights Team