Children’s exposure to gambling ads has declined in the UK: Advertising Standards Report confirms
The top online casinos take extreme care not to target any children or minors in their advertising. This is usually considered a priority in terms of responsible gambling, however, it’s not to say that mistakes weren’t made in the past with advertising being inadvertently seen by children or teens.
The UK Gambling Commission, which is the gambling regulator for online casinos operating in the UK, takes a particularly strict approach to this. In October 2022, a particularly controversial law was enacted in the UK, stating that gambling adverts “must not be of strong appeal to children or young persons”.
The change was intended to safeguard children and young persons, but it created strong controversy for appearing to catch top sports personalities and other influencers with a strong under-18 following who had previously had no legal problems accepting advertising contracts with some of the top-rated online casinos and sportsbooks.
The law also resulted in the removal of gambling advertising from many major UK sporting events, such as the Premier League, which also has a large following among children and teens. Now, this law appears to be bearing fruit despite the controversy, as a new report published by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) revealed information about children’s exposure to restricted TV advertising.
Children’s exposure to gambling advertising on TV has decreased from an average of 3.0 adverts per week in 2010 to 1.8 adverts per week in 2023. Moreover, the exposure of under-16s to gambling ads decreased by two-fifths since 2010, rendering the world of online casinos generally safer. The report reveals that children’s exposure to gambling TV ads is on a definition “downward trend”.
This reflects a wider trend where children are actually being exposed to less advertising on TV in general. In fact, children’s exposure to all forms of TV advertising decreased from an average of 226.7 adverts per week in 2010 to 58.2 adverts per week in 2023. Broken down further, this means that children saw around two adverts on TV on average, for every nine seen by adults in 2023. These included all gambling adverts related to land and online casinos.
Out of all four countries in the UK – England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales – the best performer in this regard was England, with children only being exposed to a total average of 56.6 adverts per week, including gambling-related ones.
British media adamant that UK children are “bombarded’ by gambling ads
Still, not everyone views the situation from such rose-tinted spectacles. The majority of British media remains of the opinion that children across the UK are exposed to an excess of gambling adverts. A few weeks ago The Guardian ran an in-depth story about the issue, referring to a claim that was made by responsible gambling agency GambleAware that children are being “bombarded” with gambling ads.
The Guardian reported that, despite legal restrictions on advertising campaigns targeting young people, the internet remains “saturated” with gambling content and promotions, with young people feeling their internet activity is “overwhelmed” by such content.
“Research shows that gambling content is now part of many children’s lives. This is worrying, as early exposure to gambling can normalise gambling for children at a young age, and lead to problems. We need to see more restrictions put on gambling advertising and content to ensure it is not appearing in places where children can see it. Urgent action is needed to protect children.”
GambleAware CEO Zoe Osmond
Osmond explained that the report was based on a number of interviews with children and young people aged between seven and 25 about the way gambling affected their lives. The report found that children had difficulties distinguishing between gambling products and gambling-like content, like mobile phone games played with in-app purchases.
The interviews were carried out by Sherbert Research, with managing director Nicki Karet elaborating that there’s a “confusing” gray area between online gambling and gambling-like gaming. This was especially true for younger children.
“This grey area is further confusing because gambling advertising, particularly online, often uses visuals and tonal expressions that can be seen to directly target children, such as cartoon graphics, bright colours and sounds,”
Karet told The Guardian.
This is not the first time that GambleAware has highlighted the issue. An earlier study held in March 2020 had already established that exposure to gambling advertising, including on social media, can have an impact on the likelihood that a child or young person will gamble in the future.
The study had revealed that almost all (96%) of the 11-24-year-old participants had been exposed to gambling marketing messages in the previous weeks. This was in part thanks to the rise of new forms of gambling marketing through social media, which increased the ways in which children and young people could engage with gambling brands and online casinos.
The above situation has led to GambleAware calling for “fresh regulation to curb the amount of advertising seen by young people”, with the CEO stating that “a wider definition of gambling may be required to include excessive or compulsive engagement with online games that have elements of betting, such as loot boxes – which can be bought with virtual currencies or real money – and free fruit-machine slot games on Google Play and other platforms.”
Enforcement of age verification on all gambling products
However, the Betting and Gaming Council in the UK insist that all its members actually do take a very strict approach to age verification on all their gambling products, with online casinos even going so far as to introduce new ‘age gating’ rules when it comes to advertising on social media platforms.
The Council in fact released a press statement only a few days ago, stating that its members boast record compliance on age verification checks. This statement is backed by research recently concluded by Serve Legal, which is a leading provider of ID and compliance testing services in the UK & Ireland. The company provides extensive, independent audit services to gambling operators to help clients protect and improve operational and compliance standards.
Its research into this specific topic yielded highly encouraging results: sportsbooks boast a 91.4% age verification pass rate, while land-based and online casinos have an almost perfect pass rate of 98%.
The figures represent a whopping 30% increase since the last audit took place in 2009. The Council insists that all its members take a “zero tolerance approach” to gambling activities by children and young people, and have raised their standards to implement this approach.
For instance, age gating is being employed to successfully stop children from encountering gambling-related advertising on social media, with UK online casinos targeting ads to those aged 25 and over unless a platform can verifiably prove that its age gating systems can prevent under 18s from accessing regulated betting and gaming advertising content.
The study also revealed that remote gambling at online casinos and sportsbooks was not the main source of underage gambling. Rather, the most popular forms of betting by children turned out to be legal arcade games like penny pusher and claw grab machines, bets between friends or family, and playing cards for money.
The Council has also petitioned the Government, requesting that social media companies be asked to cooperate more closely with the betting and gaming industry in limiting marketing seen by young people.
Ultimately, this is an area where it’s always good to encourage improvement, and top online casinos are always willing to implement any reasonable measures to help improve the figures. And as the latest statistics show, the strategy appears to be working.