Gambling: Addiction

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, when the fun stops, stop gambling. I think that that was intended as a government warning, in tiny letters at the bottom of the television screen which you need a microscope to see. But the message is ambiguous and insidious. It is not surprising that one gambling organisation has taken over the warning as its own message. It is flashed up fully on Sky Sports screens at frequent intervals with the word “fun” in the largest capital letters, lit up with flashing light bulbs. The message is not that gambling is dangerous but that it is fun.

GambleAware has found that 370,000 children under 16 have spent their own money on gambling, and 25,000 may be problem gamblers. The noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, gave similar figures a moment ago. This is the effect of gambling advertisements on television, especially during sports coverage. The watershed at 9 pm is meaningless.

The problem is highlighted by the campaign by casino operators 32Red. On its website, it is proud of its strategy to use sports sponsorship as an effective route to drive up brand growth. It states:

“Our football, racing and boxing sponsorships helped see 32Red separate itself from our competitive set of casino first operators from 2016-17”.


It has deals with six leading football clubs in the Champions League and the Premier League and estimates that football shirts branded with its logo get continuous exposure of the brand in 26% of football coverage on television on a Saturday afternoon. It follows that up with the sponsorship of the Ant and Dec show on ITV on Saturday evening. I do not know whether it is one of the eight firms to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth referred as refusing to contribute to the levy, but I would not be at all surprised.

The important point is that logos on football shirts and TV sponsoring get around the restrictions in the UK code of advertising practice, the CAP code. True it is that shirts for youngsters must be marketed without the logo, but that is insidious in itself. Children want the big shirt, the adult shirt, with the same logo as the players. Gambling becomes legitimised as an adult activity and makes children and young people want to do it when they are old enough. I remember cigarette advertising in my youth when it seemed cool to smoke. Long drags were supposed to be the way to a girl’s heart; we now know that they are the way to a heart disease. The CAP code expressly forbids adverts which suggest that gambling is a rite of passage, but there are subtle ways of implying that it is. I listened with great care to the passionate and powerful speech of my noble friend Lady Benjamin, who talked about the problems that students face.

The 32Red campaign was highly successful. It set itself a target of achieving £100 million turnover in four years and achieved it with a year to spare. In 2017, it sold the business for £176 million, four times the value of the company at the start of its campaign three years before. Under new owners but using the same strategy, the company is looking to be the number one UK casino operator. It is interesting that, in June this year, it was fined £2 million by the Gambling Commission as a penalty for failing to take steps to protect an addict who had fallen under its spell.

These gambling companies constantly look for new blood to suck. If a person has a bet online, his email address is captured. He will consent to the receipt of electronic marketing. Unless he expressly withdraws their consent, he can expect to receive to his mobile, iPad or PC tailored offers in the nature of free bets or cash incentives, beamed at him at frequent intervals to deepen his commitment.

No doubt that is good business for the operators, but what about the societal costs to which noble Lords have referred? These loopholes must be closed. The IPPR study for GambleAware in December 2016 charted the costs associated with gambling at £1.2 billion per year. Mental health services, police intervention and homelessness are major components of that figure. The largest costs are wrapped up in the health service and the welfare and criminal justice systems.

The problem is that the Government pocket more than £2 billion a year from their various levies, and their announcement this week, to which noble Lords have referred, to delay the introduction of the £2 ceiling for fixed-odds betting terminals is an indication that they are reluctant to lose this nice little earner. When the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, spoke about “extreme losses”, I think he had the Government in mind, rather than gamblers. The PwC report covered by the Guardian in 2016 demonstrated the weakness in the industry’s own attempt to tackle addiction.

“When the fun stops”? What fun for the tens of thousands for whom gambling is an addiction that destroys their lives, sometimes literally, and the lives and living of their families?