Former Paddy Power chair Fintan Drury called for a ban on betting ads during daytime sports broadcasts in the UK at a recent conference on sports ethics.
Drury, now a sports agent, was speaking at the fourth conference on ethics in sport hosted by the Department of Religions and Theology at Trinity College in Dublin. He said that betting firms as well as alcohol companies should be taken out of sports sponsorship to help combat gambling addiction.
“It is a scandal that we have a situation where broadcasters are allowed to promote gambling companies during the afternoons before the watershed that applies to booze,” Drury said.
He added that there was “a massive job of work to be done in terms of taking booze companies and betting companies out of sport.”
“It won’t come from the politicians because there’s too much tax revenues at stake and it actually has to come from grassroots,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. They’ve already failed to do it with regard to booze. So, if we could get them mobilized from the grassroots, I believe that’s the only way we can get things to change.”
The conference also heard from former Armagh soccer player Oisín McConville who spoke about his problems with gambling addiction and his having to wear a jersey while playing that carried an ad for a gambling firm.
McConville said that when he had come out of treatment for his gambling addiction in February 2006, by July of that year his Armagh club had gone from being sponsored by a local bakery to being sponsored by Bar One Racing.
McConville said wearing the jersey was a moral dilemma for him, but ultimately, he decided he could not walk away from his soccer career and continued playing.
