Strict new regulations are needed to protect children from the “extremely high levels” of gambling marketing they are being exposed to across Ireland.

A new all-island report from Maynooth and Belfast Universities is warning that sports programmes are now “saturated” with gambling marketing at all times of the day.

It notes that children are being led to believe that gambling is a normal part of many sports.

The authors note that television advertising is just a small part of the gambling marketing strategy for sport, with children and teens exposed to “extensive gambling marketing” on social media.

Maynooth University Adjunct Professor of Sociology Aphra Kerr told Newstalk that young people are clearly being influenced by never-ending advertising campaigns.

“What we’re starting to see and what we can say from our research is that, because young people were being exposed to quite a lot of gambling marketing as part of their consumption of sports, they were starting to think that this was a normal part of certain sports – this type of advertising,” she said.

“That also, perhaps, placing a bet was part of consuming sports.”

The report notes that children are being offered a very unbalanced view of gambling, with most of the marketing they see downplaying the risks and harms.

While labels urging responsible gambling do exist, they are often obscured or too small to be readable, the report finds.

Gambling

Professor Kerr said darts and horse racing are the worst offenders when it comes to gambling advertising.

“What concerns us here about these is, these are broadcast in the middle of the day,” she said.

“These are not late at night at all; this is live TV sport broadcast in the middle of the day that everybody - including young people - has access to viewing.”

The report finds that companies are increasingly using social media video highlights to draw young people into gambling promotions.

Gambling companies now produce a wide range of social media content designed implicitly for sharing online – including paid sponsorships with sports celebrities and social media influencers.

As a result, teenagers are bombarded with gambling advertising on television, on social media and on billboards in towns and cities.

Sponsored programmes

On top of this, gambling marketing rarely employs female sports celebrities and does not target women’s sports.

“Some sports programmes on television have so much gambling marketing in them that they should be labelled sponsored programmes,” said Prof Kerr.

“If we are serious about introducing a public health approach to gambling and we want to protect the integrity of sport, then media companies and sports organisations must remove their reliance on revenues from gambling marketing and gambling-related content.”

The all-island report makes several policy recommendations:

• Governments North and South need to introduce new laws to curtail the volume, frequency and timing of gambling marketing.
• Tougher regulations are also needed around the content of gambling marketing.
• Sports organisations that receive state funding, should be required to eliminate their reliance on gambling marketing at all sporting events venues – especially from areas visible in broadcast programmes.
• Professional broadcast and social media practice guidelines need to be updated to recognise gambling as a public health issue and to remove gambling marketing references from live and sports highlights programmes before 9pm.
• They should be required to display gambling warnings if carrying gambling marketing in sports programmes.
• Gambling marketing regulation requires a cross-departmental and shared UK and Ireland approach.
• The gambling levy in both jurisdictions needs to be used to fund a public health and education campaign focussed on prevention and awareness, publicly funded treatments and research on the island of Ireland.

Main image shows a young Norwich City Football fan celebrating a goal versus Ipswich, 06-05-2015. Image: Richard Arthur/Alamy