UK’s Voluntary Betting Ad Ban Faces Restart Test

David Clifton is quoted in an OnlineBettingSites.com article entitled “UK’s Voluntary Betting Ad Ban Faces Restart Test” (that you can download below).

The article focuses on the 27 April 2020 announcement by the Betting and Gaming Council that as soon as possible but, in any event no later than today (7 May 2020), all BGC members will – for a period of 6 weeks and at a minimum until 5 June 2020 – voluntarily remove all of their TV and radio gaming advertising in the UK during the COVID-19 lockdown.

David now expands on his comments quoted within the article as follows:

Given the call by DCMS Minister Nigel Huddleston for the gambling sector to do all it can to tackle any heightened risk of problem gambling during the lockdown and the restrictions on gambling advertising being imposed in some European countries, the BGC had little alternative but to act as it did and to gain some rare positive press for so doing.

However, having done so, it’s going to be difficult for its members to revert to the ‘status quo ante’ without provoking public, media and parliamentary ire that will do the sector’s prospects no good whatsoever in the forthcoming Gambling Act review.

So what will happen? I expect an easing of the voluntary advertising restrictions to be accompanied by a revised Industry Code for Socially Responsible Advertising, encouraging more safer gambling messaging in gambling ads wherever they appear and to include all of the new commitments recommended by the Safer Advertising Online working group.

Even that will be insufficient for the anti-gambling lobbyists, so it’s likely to be a challenging test of the BGC’s authority to see to what extent it can influence newly cash-starved PFL clubs – some of which are already accused of operating in a ‘moral vacuum’ – to reduce the level of pitch-side hoarding gambling adverts by Asian-facing brands. My guess is that regulatory or legislative intervention will be required to address that.

UPDATES:

  1. On 10 May 2020, The Guardian published an article entitled “Gambling firms’ social messages are ‘thinly veiled’ adverts, say MPs”, in which it reported that the Gambling Related Harm APPG had written a letter to Nigel Huddleston stating that TV ads screened since the 7th May deadline “are clearly just forms of advertising under the thinly veiled guise of a social responsibility message” and alleging that the BGC’s “alleged strategy was a demonstration of the failure of self-regulation by the industry”, calling on the government to intervene.
  2. On 5 June 2020, in an article for PoliticsHome, Michael Dugher confirmed that, whilst the sector must continue its commitment to safer gambling, the above restrictions on TV and radio gaming advertising have come to an end.