A new UK report calls gambling companies “irresponsible” for not doing enough to stop children seeing their advertisements, particularly on social media platforms such as Twitter.
The interim report is part of a longer study commissioned by a leading gambling charity in the UK, GambleAware.
The research was led Ipsos Mori and that an estimated 41,000 children under 16 follow gambling-related accounts on Twitter and children replied to or re-tweeted those accounts 13,000 times. This came as firms increased their spending on paid advertising spots by 24 percent between 2015 and 2018 to £329 million a year.
The report did not find that the ads specifically targeted children, but found many still have elements that appeal to younger people. The gambling companies also do not do enough to screen the ads from children, the report said.
Researchers also said there was “little evidence” of responsible gambling messages being promoted online, particularly on Twitter. Of 888,745 tweets analyzed over nine months in 2018, only 7 percent contained a responsible gambling message, the report said.
The report added more fuel to attempts in the UK Parliament to ban gambling related advertisements.
“It’s no wonder we have so many children gambling when irresponsible gambling companies are placing adverts that appeal to kids,” said Tom Watson, the Labor deputy leader. “The explosion of gambling advertising in recent years is fueling problem gambling. If we are going to tackle addiction, we need to start by tackling adverts.”
Meanwhile, the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency has backed off its prior ruling against online gaming operator Sky Bet, and now says an August 2018 television ad was not “socially irresponsible.”
The advertisement promoted Sky Bet’s “request-a-bet” service, which allow bettors to place a combination of bets throughout a soccer match. Some viewers opposed the ad in which football broadcaster Jeff Stelling promotes the service. “Forget ‘anything can happen,’” Stelling says. “In sport, anything does happen. But could it be better? With Request-a-Bet it could. Spark your sports brain and roll all the possibilities into one bet.
“Three red cards, seven corners, five goals: let’s price that up. Or browse hundreds of request a bets on our app. The possibilities are humongous. How big is your sports noggin? Sky Bet, Britain’s most popular online bookmaker. When the fun stops, stop.”
Following the turnaround, Clearcast stated that it believed the ad was “in line with similar sports betting treatments where the focus was on the excitement and possibilities within sports for fans, rather than on the outcome of the bet or on the possibilities of winning.”
The ASA ruling stated: “The ad focused on the features of the particular betting service being promoted and we did not consider that it irresponsibly exaggerated the role which sports knowledge played in achieving betting success.
“The phrase ‘In sport anything does happen’ explicitly recognized the uncertain nature of sporting outcomes. We therefore concluded that the ad was not socially irresponsible and did not breach the code.”
