Forest Green Rovers are supporting the wearing of yellow laces as part of a campaign to stop gambling advertising and sponsorship in football.
League One Rovers are playing an FA Cup first-round tie away at South Shields on Saturday, live on the BBC.
Club owner Dale Vince told BBC Sport gambling in football “is uncontrolled, quite frankly, it’s running away”.
“I’m hoping that the majority of our boys will wear yellow laces and we’ll make a bit of a statement,” he added.
“People, I think, are generally unaware of the harm that gambling causes. It can cause suicides, people lose their homes, lose their families, and advertising of gambling is unregulated in football.
“It’s put in front of a young audience, and older people as well. Gambling is super addictive, and it’s hyper normalised by football because it’s prevalent across Premier League games on TV. It’s all about encouraging people to gamble and there’s something wrong with that.”
Several non-league and women’s teams are supporting the yellow laces campaign this weekend, including women’s sides Glasgow City and Lewes FC Women. Support also comes from non-league teams Dulwich Hamlet, Billericay Town, Welsh side Llantwit Major and Headingley AFC.
Tranmere Rovers will show their backing by warming up in yellow t-shirts before their FA Cup round one match against Carlisle United on Saturday.
The initiative, held during Addiction Awareness Week, has been organised by campaign group The Big Step, which wants an end to all gambling advertising and sponsorship in football.
Eight Premier League teams and six Championship sides have gambling sponsorships on their shirts, with clubs in the top two tiers having 31 betting partners between them.
The English Football League (EFL) is also sponsored by Sky Bet and research has shown that gambling logos can appear more than 700 times in a live televised match.
The yellow laces campaign comes a week after Gambling Commission data showed an increase in 16-24-year-olds with gambling addiction over the past year. Public Health England estimates there are more than 400 gambling-related suicides each year.
The EFL says there is no causal link between gambling adverts and addiction. It is a view also held by the Premier League and the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC).
A spokesperson for the BGC also says: “Betting advertising and sponsorship must comply with strict guidelines and safer gambling messaging is regularly and prominently displayed.”
Premier League clubs are yet to vote on whether they will adopt a voluntary gambling shirt sponsorship ban after the government delayed publishing its white paper on gambling regulation in July.
The EFL says its clubs would lose £40m a year if a gambling advertising ban was introduced and says it wants all of its gambling partner relationships to be socially responsible. However, some clubs are still receiving a direct cut of gamblers’ losses as part of a now discontinued scheme with Sky Bet.
Several players wearing the laces this weekend have personal experience of gambling addiction, including Lewis Carey, who plays for Lewes FC.
He said: “It’s important that footballers like me do what we can to be positive examples to young people, and that must mean we aren’t forced to be billboards for gambling, nor play in stadiums that promote this product that destroyed my life.”
A BGC spokesperson added: “The government has previously stated research did not establish a causal link between exposure to advertising and the development of problem gambling.
“It should also be noted that betting operators’ logos cannot be used on children’s clothing – including replica football kits – while the whistle to whistle ban has reduced the number of TV betting commercials viewed by children during live sports before the watershed by 97%.
“We are encouraged by the latest figures from the Gambling Commission that showed the rate of problem gambling was 0.3% of the population – down from 0.4% the year previous.”
Match fixtures – clubs taking part in bold:
Saturday 5 November:
South Shields vs Forest Green Rovers (FA Cup 1st Round)
Carlisle United vs Tranmere Rovers (FA Cup 1st Round)
Dulwich Hamlet vs Hampton and Richmond Borough (National League N/S)
Kingstonian vs Billericay Town (Non-League Premier)
Llantwit Major vs Swansea Uni (Welsh Feeder League)
Grassington United v Headingley AFC (West Riding County Cup)
Sunday November 6th:
Glasgow City vs Hibernian (SWPL Cup Semi Finals)
Lewes FC Women v Bristol City (Women’s Championship)