After prolonged calls by campaigners for the UK government to tighten restrictions on gambling advertising, this week saw the news that sports people and celebrities would be banned from appearing in the industry’s advertising campaigns.

For years, football managers such as José Mourinho, players like Cristiano Ronaldo and various celebrities have been splashed across gambling ad campaigns in a bid to make brands stand out from the crowd.

The same is true all over the world, with advertising for this year’s Super Bowl a key example of how celebrity endorsement can be used to cut through in a highly competitive marketplace. However, in the UK those days are now gone.

The Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) Committee of Advertising Practice has drawn up a new set of rules, designed to deter operators from using advertising practices that risk luring “young people and vulnerable audiences”. In particular, the intention is to prevent ads piggybacking youth culture to push adult products.

The ASA’s announcement follows the publication of a House of Commons Library whitepaper on 17 March, which outlined how the current Gambling Act regulates advertising in the industry.

It pointed out that gambling advertising in general has proliferated significantly since the Act came into force in 2007. Concerns over the intrusive levels of advertising and sponsorship on TV during sports tournaments led to a whistle-to-whistle ban in 2019, which is believed to have slashed the number of TV ads seen by 4 to 17-year-olds by 97 per cent. Shirt sponsorships are also being phased out.

The move is palatable enough for an industry that has both long seen it coming and in recent years has been more receptive to initiatives that demonstrate a greater commitment to player protection.

In its response to the regulatory changes, the UK’s Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) CEO Michael Dugher said: “The BGC supports these changes not least because they build on a whole range of measures we have led in recent times to drive up standards and ensure further protections in advertising.”

He flagged the BGC’s role in introducing the whistle-to-whistle ban on TV betting commercials during live sport before the 9pm watershed, as well as the industry’s age-gating rules on advertising on social platforms, restricting ads to those over 25 years old.

“It is worth remembering that according to the Gambling Commission, the proportion of young people who gambled in a previous seven day period fell from 23 per cent in 2011 to 11 per cent in 2019”, he added.

“The most popular forms of betting by young people are playing cards, scratchcards, bets between friends and fruit machines – not with BGC members. The BGC take a zero-tolerance approach to gambling by those under the age of 18 and we enforce the toughest possible action.”

Interestingly, despite the apparent appetite for these reforms from the industry and beyond, the House of Commons Library whitepaper cited a DCMS review in 2016, in which broadcasters, the ASA/CAP, the Advertising Association, and sporting bodies as having all pointed to research showing that “the impact of advertising on problem gambling was small”.

Likewise, it found that an Ipsos MORI report in 2020 had characterised the links between advertising and gambling behaviour as “complex and multifaceted”. While advertising was known to increased substantially, the number level of gambling addiction was understood to have remined fairly stable, although the report adds the caveat that levels of ‘gambling-related harm’ were harder to quantify.

While, reducing the amount of gambling ads that minors see is undoubtedly wise, it’s difficult to fully accept that these measures have been introduced on the basis of well evidenced research. As usual, there is a sense that regulation is being designed in light of the public mood, rather than robust research.