Betting sponsorship in football: what’s being done about it?
Over the last few years, there has been more and more pushback on allowing betting companies to sponsor within sport. Football clubs have a big part to play in this, with almost half of English Premier League teams having their shirt sponsored by a betting company last season, with even more clubs having an affiliation with a betting company through secondary partnerships. Profit for these companies from sports betting has crept into the hundreds of millions over the past year, so it seems logical that they would target football clubs and other sporting organisations to further increase profit. But what about the ethical implications of promoting gambling?
Footballers are not allowed to be in gambling adverts or have active betting accounts, yet we see players adorned in shirts carrying betting sponsors every week. In the UK, law prohibits direct marketing of gambling to children, however gambling logos occur frequently in football-related products and media consumed by children. While replica shirts in children’s sizes have betting and alcohol sponsors removed, there are other ways through which children are interacting with sponsors: collectable cards, football magazines, and advertisements at stadia, not least seeing their favourite players wearing the sponsors on the front of their shirts. In light of excessive exposure to gambling advertising, UK politicians from across the major parties called for and end to shirt sponsorship from betting companies back in 2018, and this was followed by William Hill, Betfred and Bet365 ending their advertisements during live sports broadcasts. The call to cease shirt sponsorship still hasn’t materialised though, and whole leagues such as the English Championship are still sponsored by Sky Bet. Just today in fact, a notable Scottish football team announced their shirt sponsor for next season will be an online casino.
Gambling addiction in the UK is a silent pandemic. With the introduction of online gambling, visiting a bookmakers is no longer the only way to engage with gambling: from the comfort of your home you are able to place bets on sports around the world, as well as play virtual casino games. Several studies from across the world have indicated that children and young people under the legal betting age associate sport with gambling (e.g., Djohari et al., 2019). While efforts have been made to eliminate direct marketing to children (i.e., the shirt sponsorship ban for children from 2007), there are many ways in which children are still engaging with gambling promotion. A sizeable subset of adult sports fans have developed a disordered gambling addiction, with associated complications from that including other mental health problems, relationship problems, bankruptcy, suicidality and criminality (Bowden-Jones et al., 2022). With betting companies still adorning football shirts and league sponsorships, the UK sports industry is not helping the pandemic that is disordered gambling. Additionally, a lack of funding into behavioural addition research in the UK is likely to mean that we continue to fall short of making the necessary changes for positive outcomes. It’s clear that targeted interventions need to be implemented, but the individuals most at risk are being targeted by the betting companies themselves while engaging with their favourite sports. In answer to the initial question, what’s being done about it?: evidently not enough yet.
