Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) CEO Michael Dugher told lawmakers July 11 that the industry welcomes an “evidence led” approach that the government used in researching its gambling White Paper, Yahoo Finance reported.
Dugher, speaking to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, added that the industry sees no link between sports advertising and gambling addiction.
He said, “If the objective is to reduce harm, to tackle problem gambling, it would be a sensible thing to do if there was any evidence of a link between advertising and sports sponsorship and problem gambling. And the Government, having reviewed all of the evidence, found no evidence.”
He made the comment in response to a question asking his opinion as to whether there should be a ban on sports advertising because it might make gambling attractive to minors.
Committee member John Nicolson was skeptical of that, pointing out that the Premier League recently volunteered to remove ads from shirts. “That’s an admission that it does do harm. They wouldn’t agree to do it if they hadn’t concluded that it did harm.”
Dugher countered that it was an admission that there was “public concern about the scale and volume of branding around football and they responded to that.”
Dugher continued, “There are two fundamentally different philosophical approaches. There are those who believe that gambling is like tobacco – something that is universally and intrinsically harmful to all, in which case that leads you down a journey of advertising bans, sports sponsorship bans.”
The other vision, “which is the one I share – I think the majority of people share – which is gambling is much more like alcohol, which is something that millions of people do, and the vast majority of people do it perfectly responsibly and safely, however there are people who can have a problem and in the most extreme cases those issues can be devastating.”
He said he prefers to see “better regulation, restrictions on advertising, raising standard . . .”
Nicolson pointed out that the gambling industry has grown a lot. “In 2011 the gross gambling yield for the gambling industry was 8.4 billion. It rocketed last year to 14.1 billion. That’s a huge increase.”
Dugher conceded that half of the adult population enjoys making a regular wager. But he added, “A huge chunk of that is National Lottery, which is why I’m slightly surprised that the National Lottery isn’t really part of this gambling review.”
Dugher also told the committee that plans to require affordability checks for sports betting could further cut into profitability for this industry, the Racing Post reported. The government has said it wants to make the affordability checks “frictionless.”
Committee Chairwoman Dame Caroline Dinenage asked, “What impact will these reforms have on the viability of the U.K. horse racing and breeding industry?”
He replied, “If you hit our revenues and our turnover, that has a direct and corresponding impact on horseracing funding.”
Dugher said the government could best fight gambling addiction by stopping “the traffic” to illegal gambling sites, which requiring patrons to hand over financial documents might increase.
The Gambling Commission will soon launch a consultation on affordability checks.
