Gambling: Advertising

(asked on 21st June 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions (a) he and (b) officials in his Department have had with (i) broadcasters and (ii) sport organisations on placing trigger warnings on gambling advertising during sport broadcasts.


Answered by
John Whittingdale Portrait
John Whittingdale
This question was answered on 28th June 2021

All gambling advertising, wherever it appears, is subject to strict controls on content and placement. Gambling operators advertising in the UK must abide by the advertising codes issued by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) for online and non-broadcast spaces and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) for TV and radio. The Gambling Industry Code for Socially Responsible Advertising additionally mandates that a safer gambling message must appear on screen throughout all televised adverts, along with the inclusion of the address begambleaware.org (which signposts to a wide range of advice and support related to gambling). The Industry Code also requires safer gambling messages in all radio adverts.

The government launched its Review of the Gambling Act 2005 on 8 December with the publication of a Call for Evidence. As part of the wide scope of that Review, we called for evidence on the benefits or harms of allowing gambling operators to advertise and the effectiveness of mandatory safer gambling messages in adverts in preventing harm. The Call for Evidence closed on 31 March and received approximately 16,000 submissions from a broad range of interested organisations and individuals, including broadcasters, sporting bodies and individuals and organisations representing those with lived experience of gambling-related harm. We are considering all the evidence received carefully and aim to publish a white paper by the end of the year outlining our conclusions and policy proposals.

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