SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
UK broadcasting standards regulator –Ofcom published its study on UK gambling advertisement and exposure. The regulator stated that British television had increased by 600 per cent since the deregulation of the sector in September 2007, growing from 234,000 to 1.4 million a year.
Further research reported that gambling adverts had generated 30.9 billion views. The Ofcom research found that a substantial number of ads were shown before the UK watershed.
Concerns of igaming advertisements being shown to children have been debated by the House of Lords, in particular online bingo advertising. Due to online bingo’s classification as a leisure pursuit, the igaming product was exempt from advertising restrictions imposed by the Gambling Act of 2005.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara attacked igaming operators stating that ‘gambling industry coverage had gone too far, It has spread from football into other sports. You cannot watch sports without being saturated with gambling adverts and if you have kids that is worrying’
Further criticism came from members of the House of Lords Baroness Jones of Whitchurch speaking to the independent.co.uk she remarked that bingo no longer any of the attributes associated with its traditional format. She further commented
“Exemptions allowing adverts for bingo and sports betting, combined with the new social media opportunities, have become major loopholes which the online gambling companies all too readily exploit,” she wrote on the Labour Lords blog.
“Anyone switching on morning or afternoon TV, as I did over Christmas, will see a relentless bombardment of ads for online bingo presented as an entertaining pastime with no mention of the dangers of addiction. Often these programmes are watched by children without adults present, and we know from other studies how susceptible they can be to adverts.”
