Football Index Collapse: Lessons Learned
Gill Furniss Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mrs Murray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this debate on such an important issue, which has caused a great deal of suffering for thousands of people.
Several years ago, I met a group of parents outside Hillsborough stadium whose loved ones had tragically taken their own lives after struggling with gambling addiction. The victims were mainly in their 20s and 30s. The parents were taking part in the Big Step, and were walking between five Yorkshire football grounds to call for an end to gambling advertising and sponsorship in football. Thirty-five clubs across the UK have signed the Big Step’s pledge to eliminate gambling advertisements in football, and Premier League teams have agreed not to take front-of-shirt sponsorship deals from gambling firms from 2026. However, that leaves us in the nonsensical situation whereby we recognise the dangers posed by gambling sponsorships but are happy to relegate them to the sleeves of football kits and advertising hoardings around stadiums, despite research showing that only 5% of gambling logos showed during live Premier League football matches would be affected by the front-of-shirt ban—in my opinion, that is 5% too many.
We need to do far more to combat the blight of gambling sponsorship in sport. I remain disappointed that the Government’s White Paper on gambling reform, which required the introduction of a cross-sport gambling sponsorship code of conduct, has been continually delayed. Will the Minister tell us when that code of conduct will be introduced? Will he investigate KiX, which is now operating instead of FI?
Sadly, any changes to legislation on football sponsorship are too late for the users of Football Index. Prior to its collapse, Football Index sponsored the shirts of three English Football League teams. Those sponsorship deals helped to convey an aura of trust and respectability that may not otherwise have existed, furthering the dupe that it was an investment platform. Football Index was more than happy to play into that misconception. Internal company documents reveal that Neil Kelly, the director of BetIndex—the Jersey-based company that ran Football Index—said:
“the Football Index platform functions somewhat similarly to a stock market, hence for marketing purposes it is sometimes referred to as the football stock market and when the Company uses this term, it is deliberately misspelled as the football ‘stockmarket’.”
As one of the previous speakers said, that is working in the dark shadows of the law. It is completely unacceptable, and I really hope that the Minister will put it right. The deliberate misspelling may have reassured directors that they were not operating a stock market, but that distinction was less than apparent to their customers. The Guardian reported:
“The only hint on its website that it was actually a betting site was an easy-to-miss strapline, which was added several years into its existence at the insistence of the Advertising Standards Authority.”
The authority had previously complained that the language used by Football Index was
“synonymous with the language used to describe conventional stock markets and investment products.”
The Gambling Commission has been made aware of the concerns, having been warned in January 2020 that tens of thousands of users were being
“misled into believing they are investing rather than gambling, with little or no consideration that all of their money is at risk”,
and that the platform was little more than an “exceptionally dangerous pyramid scheme” in a formal submission by industry experts. However, the platform’s misleading nature meant that there was a reluctance from both the Gambling Commission and the FCA to take ultimate responsibility for regulating the product, to the detriment of the thousands of Football Index’s victims.
Let us not forget that consumers have rights, including a right to redress if their product is mis-sold. Customers in a regulated industry such as gambling have the right to expect that the regulations will be adequate, appropriate and diligent. The users of Football Index have been wronged. The regulatory failings have cost thousands of people dearly, and they deserve compensation for their losses. However, beyond that, we need real systematic change. Football is watched by millions of young people every week, yet they are still subjected to constant gambling advertisements. I fear that without urgent reform, more consumers will fall prey to similar products that intentionally blur the lines between gambling and investing. Will the Minister commit to helping ensure that the gambling sponsorship code of conduct is introduced as soon as possible?