Proposals by Premier League football clubs to give up gambling sponsors on team shirts have been criticised by campaigners as “incoherent” because they ignore more visible forms of advertising such as pitchside hoardings.
Clubs in the English top flight are understood to be close to agreeing a plan to ditch betting sponsors from shirts voluntarily, with the issue expected to go to a vote before June.
It comes amid a wider review of gambling laws by the government, which is expected to publish a white paper outlining its plans later this month.
Football clubs and the government are understood to be keen to avoid any hard restrictions on advertising in the white paper, preferring to address concerns over gambling’s visibility to young fans via voluntary measures.
The Premier League’s plans are thought to involve dropping sponsors on the front of team shirts but keeping gambling logos on shirt sleeves.
Current plans would also do nothing to rein in pitchside hoardings, where betting company logos are displayed on LED screens throughout games.
Pitchside adverts are the biggest conduit for gambling branding during a game, according to a study by academics at the University of Stirling, accounting for 38% of the locations where the sponsors are seen.
The study, of five matches broadcast live on television, found that the logos were visible more than 500 times during the average match.
A previous study found that the number could be as high as 700, although that research was conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, when adverts were often extended to cover areas where fans would have been sitting had they not been banned from live sporting events.
“Action on shirt sponsorship is a welcome and iconic acceptance of the harm caused by gambling ads but in isolation is incoherent and loses impact,” said James Grimes, a recovering gambling addict who set up the Big Step, a campaign group that aims to convince football clubs to cut ties with gambling sponsors.
“For every advert on a shirt, there are hundreds more flashing around the pitch – each one is a threat to my recovery from addiction.”
The University of Stirling report said 31 different gambling brands were referenced across the five games it analysed, with the West Ham sponsor Betway featuring most often.
Dr Richard Purves, a senior research fellow at the University of Stirling, who led the study, said shirt sponsorship was “a small part of it”.
He said: “If you watch the match, what is most visible? It’s not the shirts unless you get closeups. It’s the pitchside hoardings and the ads you see at half-time.
“The whole point of sponsorship is to saturate fans with images of a company so that it’s fixed in their mind and associated with that team or occasion. Voluntary measures [to drop shirt sponsors] might satisfy people but it doesn’t deal with the exposure, especially to young people.”
The culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, is expected to launch the white paper on gambling reforms in late April, after 10 Downing Street signed off draft proposals at the end of last month.
Reforms likely to feature in the proposals include affordability checks, a mandatory levy on firms to fund research, education and treatment, and limits on online slot machine and casino stakes.
A spokesperson for the Premier League declined to comment.
