Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the gambling industry’s spending on advertising, sponsorship and marketing, including online forms of advertising and marketing such as content marketing.

According to GambleAware’s research in 2017, the total advertising and marketing spend by gambling companies totalled £1.5 billion, of which:

• £747 million was spent on online advertising and direct marketing

• £234 million on TV advertising

• £149 million on social media advertising

• £60 million on sponsorship

• £301 million on advertising through market affiliates

• £70 million on other offline advertising

There are existing robust rules in place to ensure that advertising, whenever it appears, is socially responsible, with a particular regard to the need to protect children, young persons and other vulnerable persons from being harmed and exploited. Gambling adverts cannot be targeted at children and cannot be of ‘strong appeal’ to children, for example they cannot feature Premier League footballers and celebrities popular with children.

However, we recognise that more can be done to improve protections. We have set the gambling industry a clear task to raise standards and this work will be monitored closely.