Media

UK gambling groups halt TV and radio advertising during lockdown


The UK’s largest gambling companies have agreed to halt all TV and radio advertising while the country remains in lockdown as fears mount around an increase in problem gambling.

The Betting and Gaming Council, which represents 90 per cent of operators in the UK, said on Monday that all of its members had agreed to voluntarily cease all TV and radio advertising until June 5.

It said that existing ad slots would be replaced by safer gambling messages, donated to charities or removed from broadcast where contracts allowed.

The announcement comes a week after the government sent a letter to the BGC asking for updates on what gambling operators were doing to minimise problem gambling during the coronavirus outbreak.

According to research company Nielsen, gambling companies had already decreased their traditional marketing spend this year. Year-on-year declines in spending on TV, radio and print advertising widened from 6 per cent in January to 12 per cent in March.

“There hasn’t been an explosion in people betting online as some had predicted — in fact, the opposite is true with total revenue down by up to 60 per cent,” said Michael Dugher, chief executive of the BGC.

The BGC added that it expected its members to have implemented the ban, which does not cover online advertising, by May 7.

But health experts and campaigners have voiced concerns that problem gambling is on the rise as a result of the lockdown — an issue that has been exacerbated by the lack of sports betting as customers move to play on more addictive casino and slot games.

Neil McArthur, chief executive of the Gambling Commission, told a government committee on Monday that 15 per cent of recent gamblers had increased the time they spent betting in the past month, a figure that rose to 60 per cent for “the most engaged gamblers”.

“It’s welcome that online gambling operators have acknowledged the harm advertising causes, but this voluntary ban should have also been extended to direct marketing, such as text message promotions, which have also increased during the lockdown,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, founder of the Clean Up Gambling campaign.

Neil Goulden, executive chairman of the FTSE 250 online gambling operator Gamesys, said that there was a danger that online gambling could increase “quite substantially” during the lockdown. But he added that promoting Gamesys as a responsible operator would make it “a better business at the end of the crisis”. 

Gamesys announced that it would stop all untargeted advertising last week. In the first quarter of this year, its revenues rose 19 per cent to £155.3m as it benefited from not being exposed to sports betting, which has suffered due to the cancellation of major sports fixtures.

BGC members account for roughly 50 per cent of total gambling advertising spend with the rest made up by the National Lottery, society lotteries and bingo operators that are not part of its membership. 

According to the charity GambleAware, gambling groups spent £1.5bn on marketing in 2017 — the most recent year for which figures are available — up 56 per cent since 2014.

Claire Enders, a media analyst, estimated that betting companies spent roughly £200m on TV advertising in 2019. This compares with roughly £1bn spent online, an arena largely untouched by regulators.

“This shows how advertising spend drifts towards less regulated media,” Ms Enders said, who warned that stopping traditional media advertising would naturally push companies to increase marketing online.

The European Gaming and Betting Association, whose members account for 25 per cent of online gambling revenues in Europe, also released a new code of conduct for gambling adverts on Monday.



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