Investigation: Revenue gap looms as campaigners seek gambling ad ban

Even if it falls short of such a recommendation, Cowan believes that it is only a matter of time before clubs will have no choice but to refuse money from the gambling industry – as many Scottish clubs already do – if they are to live up to their responsibilities to protect their supporters and their players.

“I went to the Scottish Football Association pre-Covid and spoke to them, and I told them that they have got to get ahead of the game on this,” Cowan said.

“At that point, the league and both of the cups were sponsored by gambling firms, and that is now no longer the case.

“This ban will come. Clubs too have to get ahead of the game and get other sponsors on board, because if the English Premier League are told that they cannot have gambling sponsors, they will snap up the big sponsors.

“This is coming down the line. I think the general public, and particularly Scottish football fans, are sick to death of sporting events now that are essentially gambling events with football tacked onto the side of it.

“Gambling used to be an afterthought. It’s time that gambling was moved back into the background, and the football that we all love was brought into the foreground again.”

The presence of, and problems with, gambling firms in Scottish football

There are estimated to be up to 1.4 million adults addicted to gambling in the UK, as well as 55,000 children. Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any addiction, with addicts up to 15 times more likely to end their lives than members of the general population. There are up to 650 gambling-related suicides every year in the UK.

Despite these stark statistics, the gambling industry continues to enjoy a close relationship with football, and many Scottish clubs also enjoy the lucrative sponsorship deals that come with promoting their products.

In the Premiership, Celtic (Dafabet), Dundee United (Quinn Casino) and Rangers (32Red) currently have gambling companies as their main shirt sponsors, while Hibernian (Quinnbet and Marsbet, their shorts sponsor) and Ross County (Lottomart) have official gambling partners.

Dafabet, sponsors of Celtic, closed their UK casino facilities several years ago in response to tightening regulations being put in place by authorities, while 32Red, sponsors of Rangers, are one of many companies to have previously been fined by The Gambling Commission.

In one instance, they were fined £2m after missing 22 opportunities to help a problem gambler, offering the customer VIP status and free bonuses instead of advice.

The customer deposited £758,000 over more than two years despite having a monthly income of just £2150. The Gambling Commission said 32Red should have intervened after the customer admitted to staff they had spent too much, displayed frustration and chased losses.

Marsbet, shorts sponsor of Hibs, offer betting services using Bitcoin as currency, and are operated by Curacao-registered company Stella Tech B.V. Like Dafabet, they have little to no presence in the UK marketplace, but as eminent lawyer Carl Rohsler - one of the United Kingdom’s leading experts on gambling law – explained in a previous interview with Herald Sport, the attraction of advertising with UK clubs is to lend credibility.

“The football industry has become incredibly greedy because it offers a unique way of getting at gambling customers, particularly in the case of Asian operators or Turkish,” Rohsler said. “And this is particularly true of small clubs.”

Carl Rohsler is one of the UK's leading experts on gambling law. (Image: Memery Crystal)

Rohsler points to the example of BetPark - like Marsbet, a Turkish betting company - sponsoring Motherwell several years ago as the perfect example of such a practice.

“Why is it that a Turkish language operator based in Curacao would want to sponsor Motherwell, of all people?” he said.

“The answer is that they will get television exposure in every bar in Turkey. People in Turkey will look at the game, people who don’t have any chance to gamble because they only have one state operator and it is an illegal thing to do. How do they bring a Turkish language gambling operator together with those Turkish punters when they can’t advertise in Turkey?  

“They will say ‘ah, we’ll work out which television is definitely going to be viewed in Turkey, football it is’. They will be sitting at home or in the bar watching a football match where they can see a Turkish brand they have heard of, they will go to the website, tell their friends, and that way they will pick up a lot of business from a country that has a captive population of people who can’t gamble other than with them. 

“Spending however much money it is with Motherwell is money very well spent as far as BetPark are concerned. They will have lots of different mirror sites and they will change their url frequently, but they know that the power of Google means that if you type in ‘BetPark’, it will take you to the latest active site. 

“If you type in ‘gambling site that accepts Turkish Lira’, you won’t get a very good response. If you type in ‘BetPark’, then Google will do the work for you. It’s just a question of joining the dots and getting those customers to convert.”

Even if UK customers cannot bet on some of the sites advertised within Scottish football though, the very presence of gambling adverts can be a trigger for problem gamblers to bet on other platforms, campaigners argue.

The damage done

James Grimes is a recovering gambling addict who is campaigning for the end of gambling advertising in football through his organisation, The Big Step, a group of problem gamblers who march to clubs together to encourage them to review their relationships with betting companies.

“It came from my own experiences,” Grimes said. “I’m in recovery from a 12-year gambling addiction that started at the age of 16 with £5 football bets.

“It got as awful as you can imagine, it took me to the brink.

“It was when I was in recovery that I realised how pivotal football was in all of this. When I had stopped gambling, I couldn’t watch a football match without wanting to bet on it, and every time I watched a match, I was being encouraged to do the thing that destroyed my life.

“We soon learned though that clubs prioritised profit over people, and despite hearing our stories and talking about the harm that had been done, those cheques from the gambling companies trumped any of that.

“We then turned it into a full-time campaign, and now almost four years later we’ve done over 10 walks, over 30 clubs have backed our campaign, we’ve got a petition that has been signed by around 75,000 people.

“I see our role as knocking over that first domino, and I feel that if we can get something on shirt sponsorship, then that might be the thing to set the rest of the dominos off when it comes to gambling advertising in football.”

Grimes has had some success with individual clubs, and has recently sensed a change in the mood music around gambling advertising from within the game.

He said: “If you have a group of people who have been harmed by gambling all wearing yellow outside your stadium, banging on your door, writing letters and signing petitions, eventually when it gets to that point of signing that deal, you might just remember those people and think is it worth the bad PR? Is it worth the grief?

“And actually, these are human beings at these football clubs, and if you hear a story about somebody who has lost a child to a gambling related suicide, that does stick with you.

“That is sort of our role, to go out there and tell these stories, tell people that it is harmful, and it is then up to football clubs to make that decision. Or better yet, it is up to the government to make that decision.”

Grimes shares the view of Inverclyde MP Cowan that legislation preventing gambling advertising is the key factor.

“Wholeheartedly,” he said.

“The government’s responsibility should be to protect young people. At the moment, the government’s priority is to protect business, and that’s not right.

“There’s a sweet spot with this. You should tolerate gambling, it has a place in society and people should be able to bet if they want to. But you shouldn’t promote an addictive, adult product in front of millions of young people. Especially in a sport like football that is adored by millions of children.

“In the EPL alone, 25 percent of the audience are young people, and they are being relentlessly exposed to online casinos.

“The UK government are undertaking a gambling review at the moment and a white paper is expected early this year. We are hopeful they will do something, but I worry though that with advertising and sponsorship, you are not just dealing with gambling industry lobbying, but you have a football industry and a media industry that want to keep it as it is, and advertising agencies as well.

“These are big corporate interests.”

Despite those hurdles, Grimes remains optimistic that football can only swim against the tide of public opinion for so long.

“I think the public are already there,” he said. “The gambling industry has brought this on itself by having so much advertising being forced into people’s faces.

“There are now polls that say as much as 80 percent of the population would like to see an end to all gambling advertising. People don’t want it. It has no public benefit, there’s too much of it and it is harmful.

“I have no doubt there will come a day when we look back and say, ‘what the hell were we doing?’ Especially with football shirts. It is insane that we have online casinos on the front of football shirts.

“As with tobacco, there was a financial argument to keep it, but these sports have done just fine since then.

“There’s a lack of imagination within football. If you are solely relying on tobacco or gambling money to fund it, that suggests to me you are not looking hard enough. There are plenty of healthy industries out there who would work with sport if they weren’t advocating unhealthy behaviours.

“People don’t want their logos next to gambling companies.”

Rohsler though, who has brokered advertising deals for clubs such as Aston Villa, Fulham and West Brom, is more sceptical of how football could fill the hole in its finances that would be left if gambling advertising was outlawed.

“Sport exists because of the gambling industry,” Rohsler said. “The horse racing industry, for example, exists purely to provide content for the gambling industry.

“There is a great deal of misunderstanding and hypocrisy. Sports bodies are quite happy to point the finger at gambling operations for being unethical, while at the same time, most of those bodies or teams would not be able to pay the bills to keep their beloved football club going that has been there since 1856 or whatever without them.

“The economics of football are such that they can’t get the players they want with the ticket prices at the current level without money from somewhere, and no one else is going to be able to pay them anything like that kind of money if it’s not a gambling organisation.

“Who is being weak? We are all being weak. But if you are going to be weak about it, then you have to accept you are being weak about it. You can’t hold onto the moral high ground and also say that you’d quite like three million quid, and since a bookmaker is offering it, you are going to take it.

“The public might say that the gambling firms are evil, but if it wasn’t for the gambling sponsorship, then you wouldn’t have a Saturday match to go to, my friend.”

Are there alternatives?

Some Scottish clubs, such as Aberdeen and Heart of Midlothian, have already taken a stance to refuse sponsorship from gambling firms, driven by a responsibility to their communities as well as an acknowledgment that such revenue lines may soon be off-limits in any case.

Cat McCallum, marketing and communications director at Hearts, is keen to stress that she would not judge other clubs for accepting gambling sponsorship, with her own club in a fortunate position given their healthy fanbase, but she does argue there are other ways to raise advertising revenues.

Hearts have recently carried the name of charity MND Scotland on their kits. (Image: SNS)

In fact, since Ann Budge took over the club and decided to take an ethical approach to which sponsorship deals they accept, they have found themselves a more attractive proposition to other companies.

“For us, it’s not necessarily just gambling sponsorship, though that was a part of it,” McCallum said. “When Ann took over the club, our shirt sponsor was Wonga, a payday loan company.

“The decision was made back then really that it shouldn’t only be about the money coming into the club, but it was about actually making the club more a part of the community.

“I think we have shown that there are organisations out there who do now want to work with football. The game has had a certain sort of reputation in the past, and some people have shied away from advertising within football.

“When you are doing good within the community and you are trying to do the right things, we do find that we then get bigger and better sponsors coming in.

“You just have to look at the deal we did with MND Scotland and Dell. We’ve got a charity on the front of our shirts, but it is being funded by a massive global organisation. I’m not sure those things would have happened if we weren’t the socially responsible organisation that we try to be.

“We’re not perfect, no one is, but we certainly try to do the very best we can within the community. I think that definitely does make a difference to some organisations.

“I would never judge anyone else, but we get offered gambling sponsorships at least once a month, if not more. It would be a very easy thing for us to do to say yes to it and bring some more money in, but it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do, and we can find sponsorship elsewhere.

“I wouldn’t say that is easy, but it is possible.”

McCallum is also of the view that it would be prudent for clubs to begin to source such alternative sponsors across the board in order to futureproof themselves against a possible ban on gambling advertising.

“When you think back to tobacco advertising, it was everywhere,” she said.

“I do think that there is a potential for gambling advertising to go the same way as tobacco advertising and it just won’t be allowed, in which case we will be in a fortunate position because we have already filled that hole.

“I wouldn’t say it was easy or straightforward, but I do think it’s possible to find other sources of advertising and sponsorship income and stepping away from gambling.

“We can’t eradicate it completely. If a competition is sponsored by a gambling company, for instance, we are obliged to have their advertising at the ground.

“But certainly, as a club, we don’t take any direct advertising from gambling companies. Or crypto companies either, for that matter.

“We want to be a community club, so you have an obligation to try and do things the right way.

“We don’t want to come across as preachy, because we know we are in a good position with the fans, the benefactors and the staff we have, which not all Scottish clubs have.

“But it is a decision we made, and if you look at our accounts, you can see we are still doing alright.”

MP Cowan, who is also a backer of The Big Step, is encouraged by the stance taken by Hearts, though admits there is huge work still to be done to convince others within the game to resist the money being offered to them by gambling firms.

“It is great to hear of clubs such as Aberdeen and Hearts saying they won’t take gambling sponsors, whereas Dundee United this season acquired one,” he said. “So, I’d say we are winning and losing the argument in places.

“There is more awareness that there is a big problem with gambling within the game. There is a growing awareness in the game around men’s mental health in general, and that football clubs should be at the forefront of this.

“They are realising that they have young guys coming through, they are making good money, they have time on their hands…

“It’s not going away. It used to be that players would go to the racecourses and blow a lot of money. Nowadays with apps on their phones, it is 24/7. There are a lot of players who can make good money in the game, but it is a short career, and they are walking away with nothing after blowing it on gambling.

“I think clubs are realising this and looking after the long-term welfare of their players better than ever before.

“It is a great shame that Celtic and Rangers, who have the biggest platform of the teams in Scotland, have chosen to have betting companies as sponsors.”

‘Safer’ gambling

The introduction of ‘safer gambling’ messaging from gambling companies does nothing to lessen the temptation to bet, according to Grimes. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“The narrative around safer gambling is a political response to increased scrutiny and increased pressure,” Grimes said.

“It’s window dressing. It does nothing to reduce harm.

“As someone who has gone through addiction myself, when I used to see messages like ‘when the fun stops, stop’, I used to laugh at it.

“It’s like telling someone with a heroin addiction to just stop when the high wears off, or just stop when you have had too much. It doesn’t work.

“If they were serious about safer gambling, they wouldn’t advertise in front of children, and they wouldn’t have their logo in the adverts.”

Grimes finds it particularly ironic to see clubs promoting the work they are doing around mental health issues while also accepting money to promote the gambling industry.

“It is the height of hypocrisy,” he said. “I don’t know if it is deliberate or if it is just a genuine blind spot and they just don’t see gambling as a mental health issue, but I can tell you that is the thing it impacts the most.

“It is not just a financial addiction, it is a mental addiction, and I would say it impacts your mental health even more than it impacts your wallet.

“Let’s be fair, clubs do good community work, but what message does it send if you are promoting something that carries an addiction rate of 45 percent for some products and kills hundreds of people every year?

“I just think that football needs to reset this relationship as soon as possible.”

Even Rohsler, an advocate for gambling sponsorship within the game, admits there is a cynical side to the shift towards the promotion of a responsible gambling message.

“The gambling industry is full of very clever people,” Rohsler said.

“What they will do is set up a responsible gambling charity, push money into it and those funds are going to be used to display perimeter advertising giving messages not to gamble too much, and they will subsequently reduce their liability for corporation tax by virtue of this charitable gift.

“It means you get your advertising out there, and then they don’t pay tax on it.”

Is a statutory levy the answer?

As well as a ban on gambling advertising within the game, both Cowan and Grimes believe that betting companies should be paying a statutory levy on the huge profits they make from people gambling on football.

That would mean football clubs would still receive their share of those profits, but problem gamblers and children would not be exposed to gambling advertising.

“I want a statutory levy which would raise £140m a year which could be ringfenced and used for research and to provide education and support,” Cowan said.

“I don’t think we are going to get that. In terms of a levy, I think that there are a great deal of people in the game and in the gambling industry even who support that, but I still feel there is a reluctance from the government to commit on that one.”

Grimes is a little more optimistic, and says that it would only be fair for gambling companies to put more back into the game given the money they make from it.

“The gambling industry gives around £110m to the whole of UK football, which sounds like a lot of money, but it is actually less than five percent of what the gambling industry in this country makes from football betting alone,” he said.

“So, you are talking about an industry that makes over £1.6bn every year from football betting, then puts a tiny, tiny percentage back into the game through advertising and sponsorship. Which is purely designed to get more customers to add to that profit.

“My view is that there has to be a relationship between the football and gambling industries for integrity reasons, and because people are going to bet on football.

“But the gambling industry has exploited football and taken it for mugs really, because gambling companies use this product to make loads of money without paying for it.

“I think the gambling industry should be paying for the use of fixtures, for players, and that would compensate for the money lost through advertising and sponsorship, and you wouldn’t expose children to gambling advertising.”