Where: United Kingdom
When: 14 February 2024
Law stated as at: 14 February 2024
What happened:
Gambling sponsorship is consistently under the spotlight, with curbs regularly demanded by the media, politicians and charities. This is with good reason: sport is one of the major channels through which children are exposed to gambling marketing.
Where are we now?
Gambling sponsorship provides a significant amount of revenue for a number of sports: eight out of 20 Premier League clubs have a gambling operator as a shirt sponsor. Sky Bet is the title sponsor of the English Football League, and various sporting events have gambling operators as their title sponsor; for example, a number of snooker and darts tournaments.
There has been a tightening of regulations in recent years in relation to gambling’s marketing and sponsorship in relation to sport. For example:
- In 2019, the whistle-to-whistle ban was implemented – this prohibits pre-watershed gambling advertising on television from the period beginning five minutes before kick-off and the commencement of play and ending five minutes after play concludes.
- In October 2022, the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP Code) rule on appeal to children was updated – prior to the change, gambling adverts could not have “particular” appeal to children, whereas now they cannot have “strong” appeal to children. This rule has effectively prohibited gambling operators from using sports stars and clubs that are popular with children to market their products (other than in properly age-gated environments). The Advertising Standards Authority proactively monitors this area and has issued a number of rulings on this new rule since its adoption.
- Prior to the publication of the “High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age” white paper, the Premier League announced that, from the end of the 2025/26 season, clubs will not be permitted to have front of shirt gambling sponsorship. This ban does not extend to shirt sleeves, to general sponsorship deals with gambling operators, or to gambling advertising around the stadium.
What’s coming?
The white paper on gambling regulation requires sports governing bodies to develop and adopt a gambling sponsorship code of conduct. This work is underway. The code will be common to all sports, but the white paper acknowledges that it will need to incorporate flexibility to accommodate the material differences between sports.
The white paper also lists some possible principles that could be included in the code, including:
- Kits without sponsor logos for athletes aged under 18 or adults who have religious or health reasons to object to wearing gambling sponsors.
- Replica kits without logos to be available in adult sizes (the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling Code already requires this for children’s sizes).
- In stadiums used for professional-level competition, gambling advertising should not be visible in or from dedicated family areas.
- Gambling operators covering costs of education for sportspeople and staff on gambling-related harm.
- A proportion of sponsorship inventory being used for dedicated safer gambling messaging.
- A commitment only to accept sponsorship from firms operating under licence from the Gambling Commission.
The code has not been published at the time of writing. While it will not be certain until the final code is published, it is likely that measures similar to those outlined will be implemented. We may see a greater requirement to use technology (for example, to target advertising away from children where possible). We could also see principles apply differently to different sports – for example, requirements could be relaxed slightly for sports which are less popular with children, such as golf, snooker and darts.
The white paper, which was published in April 2023, said that the government would work with sports bodies to refine the code over the “coming months“. The House of Commons all-party culture, media and sport committee has stated that its publication has been “delayed repeatedly” – so it could well be published imminently. However, we learnt from the repeated delays in the publication of the white paper that we should not try and guess these things!
Why this matters: Sponsors and those involved in sports events should be mindful that requirements are tightening. This will likely result in fewer opportunities in future to fully leverage gambling sports sponsorship – for example, in relation to associated activations and marketing activities. Existing rules meant that Paddy Power was not able to leverage Luke Littler’s amazing run at the PDC World Darts Championship due to his age. We could see more scenarios like this once the code is in force.
