The UK’s House of Lords Liaison Committee heard several gambling industry experts who produced a report entitled Gambling Harm – Time for Action, which made 66 recommendations to the government.
Some Panelists Argue for Stricter Control Over Gambling Advertisements
One of the panelists, James Grimes, director of Chapter One at Gambling with Lives, explained that any government policy direction must reflect the realities and challenges facing the industry today, rather than those that existed five years ago. While the issues posed by traditional advertising remain relevant, he argued that they are overshadowed by the far greater challenges arising from modern digital marketing practices.
Will Prochaska, director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads (CEGA), ultimately aims to see gambling advertising eliminated. However, he believes the more immediate priority is tackling content marketing. Fellow panelist Dr Raffaello Rossi, senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Bristol Business School, said that this type of marketing now represents about half of the organic gambling content on social media.
Meanwhile, Baroness Twycross, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), indicated that combating the illegal gambling market remains a key government priority. She also noted that the DCMS recognizes the distinction between traditional forms of gambling and the newer, more rapidly evolving products offered online, adding that these differences were taken into account in the gambling tax reforms announced in the Autumn Budget. Twycross explained that the regulated sector is the part of the industry the government would prefer to grow.
Campaigners argue that greater levels of advertising drive higher participation, which then results in increased harm. They say that establishing a clear answer to this question would help assess whether Sarah Gardner, acting CEO of the UKGC, is on the right track in stating that her objective is to grow the industry.
Since she assumed this position in February, after its chief executive officer, Andrew Rhodes, left the organization, she has been expected to deliver results. Gardner noted that there is clearly a correlation between increased exposure and participation, but that it remains difficult, despite a large body of research, to establish a causal link between advertising and harm.
Meanwhile, Prochaska also described gambling operators as having a “top-heavy” business model, noting that around 700,000 adults are registered with GamStop. GamStop is a free UK self-exclusion service that allows people to block themselves from accessing online gambling websites and apps. Prochaska suggested that the industry’s high advertising spend reflects a need to continually replace customers who have already been lost or harmed through gambling.
However, not everyone agreed with these statements. Dan Waugh, partner at Regulus Partners, disputed the claims that gambling advertising directly causes gambling-related harm. He also responded that around six in ten of the 700,000 users of GamStop choose the five-year exclusion option, while the remainder opt for shorter exclusion periods. Waugh also noted that while it is good that people are using GamStop, these numbers should not be used to infer that all people using it have gambling problems.
It’s not the first time that such a debate has been raging at the House of Lords, as a couple of years ago, the same theme was also discussed, and the result was similar – panelists could not agree on a definitive link between gambling ads and harmful gambling behavior.