Football Governance Bill [HL]

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 23, 29, 53 and 54 standing in my name. This is something that we have touched on—gambling and football. Certain sports such as horseracing tend to be dependent on gambling, but we have something of a surfeit of gambling advertising on our televisions: it is everywhere. In these amendments, I am suggesting that football might be one place we could do without it. The revenue might be very useful to the clubs involved, but we have already heard about the huge reach of football as a subject, and the fact that there is a huge demand for it. Can we not get rid of gambling here?

I have proposed four different ways of removing gambling from the football structure. We have removed other forms of gambling. The occasional flutter might not be as damaging as cigarettes, but it is very damaging for some people. It is an international sport. Look at Kenya and its problems with children gambling on the Premier League. Gambling has developed, and football is a lovely thing because you have lots of nice options to have occasional bets on. It has grown out of all recognition, into probably something none of us would even have suspected 20 years ago. I am proposing four ways of getting gambling to exit from professional football.

I could go on at great length about this, but it is fairly late and we had a good go at it in Committee. I hope the Government will say that they are going to do something on gambling in this Bill. I have given four options, and a bit of movement might make me more willing to withdraw the amendment. If I do not hear that at the appropriate time, I will press the amendment to a vote, because we have to draw a line in the sand at some point.

We have to stop it. Football markets itself as the universal game from childhood onwards. It is almost impossible. I had a discussion with the Advertising Association over a very nice dinner provided by it. The people there were talking about AI, and I asked them whether AI would allow them to filter out children. It was a resolute no, or at least they do not think so at the moment.

We have to do something here; it has got ridiculous. Can we please take some steps to stop advertising in football being quite so pervasive? It is not just on television, is on the radio, et cetera. If the Government are prepared to take some steps I will of course back them, because a slice is better than no cake. So, if the Government are prepared to do that, they will have my full support. If not, I will push this to a vote, probably on Amendment 53. I beg to move.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words on this amendment because I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has been saying, although I am not sure that this is the vehicle for what he actually wants to do. There are many concerns about gambling, including in football, but I want to mention what one club has actually done. That club just happens to be Bolton Wanderers, which may not surprise people who have been here on other occasions.

In 2021, Bolton Wanderers closed all the on-site betting facilities that had been there for many years. That was a very big step. It committed the club to a new approach of not allowing gambling anywhere near the actual stadium, which was really important. It included not just direct gambling companies but those who were involved in them. It was a big step forward, because in the north-west, gambling has been quite a significant problem.

That was a big step for a club. There are other clubs that can and should do likewise, but Bolton Wanderers actually went one step further and introduced a system with others in the area, providing courses for fans who had been concerned about their own gambling habits and did not know where to access help. There was an outreach programme which I understand has had some degree of success, including a group called Against the Odds, which was worried about the gambling logo and the number of adverts going round the stadium during a match. It is not a solution to all the problems associated with gambling, but I mention it because it indicates what individual clubs can do, and we should encourage others to follow suit.

I agree with the noble Lord that there are the many wider problems that he has mentioned. I am personally not against gambling, per se, but I am against some of the tactics used by gambling companies to suck people in to becoming addicted and gambling more than they can afford. This is a bigger issue than just football; therefore, I understand if my noble friend the Minister cannot accept that we should be doing this in this Bill. But it is important that we are aware of that problem and that football clubs can help in these situations.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this group of amendments, which is antagonistic to every aspect of gambling being involved in football, seems to me to be the epitome of what I have been warning about in terms of an intrusive and disproportionate regulatory overreach.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I and other Members of the Lib Dem Benches have exchanged views on gambling, both in Committee and previously, so I will aim to avoid repeating that. In some ways, this group of amendments, along with the earlier amendments on the environment, express a worry that the independent football regulator will be used as a Trojan horse for a range of political hobby-horses.

One of the aims of the Bill is that the football regulator will help clubs, particularly smaller clubs, become financially sustainable and avoid financial jeopardy. That has been a compelling and convincing argument for this Bill. So why would we cut off a perfectly legitimate source of funding in the form of lucrative sponsorship, which is what these amendments would do? Gambling companies provide significant revenue through sponsorship for football teams. That money helps clubs not only pay staff salaries, upgrade training facilities and maintain stadiums but invest in youth academies and community projects—they often help fund and fuel those social responsibility projects that the noble Lord seemed so keen on earlier this evening.

Any special discriminatory treatment of the gambling industry as potential sponsors would imply a moralistic and politically charged decision-making about which sponsors are virtuous enough to be allowed. The regulator and this Bill should keep well away from that. I am sure that, in this House, there will be people who will cheer on Dale Vince’s sponsorship of Forest Green and his ownership of Ecotricity—that would pass muster as a particular type of company, as other renewable energy companies are. In all seriousness, your Lordships might not like gambling, but what about the people who do not like airlines? What is going to happen to Emirates in relation to Arsenal, or Etihad Airways at Man City? What about those big financial services companies that also fund football teams? Who will make those kinds of moralistic decisions?

Finally, gambling is a legal activity. It is also a legitimate form of entertainment and a long-standing social activity that many people find exciting, thrilling, gets the adrenaline going and risky. Yes, you can lose and that can be disappointing, but sometimes it is thrilling when you win. One of the reasons why that is attractive is because anyone who follows the football will recognise the pattern, which is “Guess what? I might win, but I rarely do. But I can just about cope”. It is understandable that some football fans will occasionally have the odd bet and enjoy it. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. Based on my own family, I am more than aware of problem gambling. Do not get me wrong: it is a vicious, nasty and horrible thing when it happens, but obsessive, compulsive gamblers are a small minority and they should not be used as an excuse to deprive football teams of valuable financial support. The Bill should have absolutely nothing to do with that kind of puritan moralism.