Affected others say that the way gambling is talked about and portrayed needs to be changed. The gambling companies claim that they are selling a leisure activity that is no different from any other. Gambling is advertised everywhere as a fun, low-risk activity that involves a good chance of winning money. Meanwhile, the likelihood of losing money and the danger of addiction and harm is hidden.
Affected others say that there needed to be no gambling advertisements or fewer advertisements and more restrictions on the techniques they use. They are angry that advertising companies are allowed to market their products so aggressively when they cause harm. Many say advertising influenced the gambling of the person close to them. People say adverts are everywhere and are hard to avoid for people who have stopped gambling and are a constant reminder to affected others of what they have been through. They are especially worried about the generations of children and young people who are growing up surrounded by gambling advertising. Affected others want gambling advertising to be controlled like tobacco or alcohol advertising.
Advertising controls
Almost everyone wanted more controls on gambling advertising. Most people want gambling advertising to be completely banned. Or if it cannot be banned, they want much stronger restrictions. This included on the amount of advertising, the way it shows gambling and the use of promotions and offers. Some describe how the person close to them was ‘hounded’ by gambling marketing even after they had died.
We need to stop bombarding people with this message that gambling is good, and gambling will lead to a six-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool in the back garden. The odds are one in a million of that happening. The odds of somebody committing suicide through their gambling is, I think going to be huge in years to come.
It doesn’t need to happen. I don’t smoke, but if I wanted to smoke, I know exactly where to get some cigarettes. There is no advertising…There doesn’t need to be this bombardment, and also this normalization to children that this is okay, and this is a really fun thing to do, and actually, if you’re not doing it, you’re missing out. It just needs to stop, it’s just everywhere and it’s vile.
In an ideal world, if you want to buy a pack of cigarettes, you know where to go to buy a pack of cigarettes, you don’t need it to be advertised. And the same should be for gambling. If you want to gamble, then you know where to go and put a bet on. You know how to put a bet on. The things like free bets, these offers that they give – it breaks your heart when you hear people that they’ve been off a bet for three months or so and keep getting bombarded with advertising. So, I think these free bets and incentives and these ridiculous incentivised odds they give you to get you back in gambling again, I think need to be banned.
I would love to see psychology banned from advertising. I know that seems really a weird thing, but we all know that psychology is used very much in advertisements, and how to get into people’s brains. We know that the gambling industry has some amazing neurobiologists, neurologists, psychologists all sitting behind the scenes that know exactly what to put into an advert.
I think there needs to be more regulation around the companies that are the betting companies. When you are out and about anywhere with a sport going on, you are hounded, hounded to put a bet on. That’s the same for people that are betting online. They get hounded, don’t they? Even when they’re dead, they get hounded… When you listen to [affected others], they were getting stuff from gambling companies long after the loved one had died. Even though they’ve been told that they’d died, it’s that insensitivity, it’s that kind of relentless pursuit of people.
I think it was a new Lion King movie years ago, and I think it was Bet365 used the Lion King as an advert. They used the launch of the new movie as a new online slot machine. I thought, how can that be allowed?… If you look at a lot of online gambling sites, they use pictures from, that look like Moana and things like that. These pretty princesses, they have no place in gambling at all.
All the gambling facilities in the high street, the posters, and the colours are so enticing. That shouldn’t be allowed. It’s like a pub landlord walking outside with a bottle of whiskey trying to tempt in younger lads, kids maybe, “Come in here. This is great. Alcohol is amazing.”
The advertising stuff does annoy me as well. I know people say, imagine this was a cigarette company, people would be so horrified. I hope that’s the way it goes that in the future, it’s looked at like tobacco companies and we just can’t believe that we ever had advertising.
They need to get rid of the incentives and the free bets and the free spins and all these disgusting incentives and they need to stop advertising the crap out of it on shop windows and adverts on TVs. No free incentives and they need to increase the rate between the spins because that’s still too short. You can see they press the button, then, boom, £20, boom, £40, £60.
Sponsorship
Affected others want to see a ban on gambling company sponsorship of football and other sports.
Sponsorship deals with football clubs mean that gambling company promotions are on players’ shirts and on moving banners around the grounds. These appear behind players and managers when they are interviewed at stadiums. They are shown on football highlight shows. This means children and young people are exposed to gambling through sport, even if advertising is not shown during a match on television.
Also, people want to see this form of marketing completely banned to stop sports becoming increasingly aligned with gambling. They are tired of having something they enjoy linked to gambling.
I would love to see gambling advertising gone. I certainly would love to see it not on anything like sports shirts, children go to those matches. What messages are we sending to younger people about gambling as well?
I’m very much involved with get gambling out of sports. Get it off of footballs shirts, get it out of stadiums. Get gambling out. You don’t need it. Cigarettes are out of football. Gambling is next, and I’m not quitting until it’s out.
Tighter regulation on advertising, definitely. Taking sponsorship of football shirts definitely, and probably Cricket now as well because they’re into it now, aren’t they, as well, and trying to crack down on these online gambling sites, really.
We go to the football, around every single grand or advert or gambling all around it, it’s just in your face, sponsors on shirts. I refuse to buy any football stuff that has a gambling company on the front of it…We did it for cigarettes, didn’t we? Cigarettes don’t get advertised now…. Gambling advertising to me, needs to be regulated far more than it is, and maybe even restricted to certain times because it’s just constant now.
Safer gambling information
Affected others say that industry should not be responsible for ‘safer gambling’ messages. As an industry that sells gambling, it is not in their interest to produce information that reduces gambling.
I think we need to take a public health approach and for people to understand that gambling is highly addictive and how the industry operates. The classic example at the moment are these new adverts take time to tap out, set your limits, blah blah blah, blah blah. People say to me isn’t it great that they’re doing that now. That’s a load of old bollocks, excuse my language, because they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near that messaging. They should be a million miles away from it. If their business is to make money, then that’s fine. That’s what gambling is. But they shouldn’t be sending out their own safer gambling messages. The gambling commission needs to regulate it properly.