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We are a partnership of various Christian organizations saying that the connection between football and gambling exists.
Gambling can cause difficulties and problems for people, it’s historically been proven that way. There’s so many stories of that. Peter Shilton, the former England goalkeeper is just about to release a book that talks about his 45-year addiction to problem gambling and the the effects that it had on his wife and his family and the wider public as a result and so there’s a massive link at the moment between gambling and gambling advertising and football clubs.
It’s almost a little bit like a loophole that um the companies seem to have exploited in the fact that within the legislation that the government has, you can have adverts linked to sporting events that cover in a different way from the rest of the gambling legislation that exists.
So you’ve got it all over shirts you’ve got shirt sponsors, you’ve got adverts before the Premier League games that are that are held on on a Sunday or a Monday.
They’ve made some uh links where they’ve they’ve said it’s not you shouldn’t have advertising within 30 minutes of the whistle um the starting whistle and the final whistle of matches, but actually when you look at it in practice it’s so prevalent that you you can probably think in your head now as I talk about a football match, you’ll remember having um some famous actor telling you that you can get ten to one.
If Wayne Rooney scores the next goal or or it’s a draw at the moment is looking unlikely so we’ll give you better odds. And some of the radio programs that are not on the BBC will have specific sponsors that will be telling you the odds as you go through the game and so it’s just that this is normalizing gambling and saying football is a gambler’s sport which is not good.
I think it’s it is the case that football is the national sport and it’s so pervasive through all of society so children from a young age are involved in it, which is great, you know millions of people play even more watch and are involved at every level.
And so, if you see and that’s why advertising exists you see the name of certain companies on the shirts of your favorite team, you’re going to think about that more and you’re going to want to be involved in it more, I think.
Children especially there’s no restrictions on it and in a similar way to tobacco advertising in the 1970s and 80s, it was everywhere. Everybody knew about it and they said well it’s a sporting event, tobacco’s there.
People realized it was bad for your health and so therefore legislation came in eventually but also then the public mood and and the culture made it, made it unacceptable really to have tobacco linked to sport, to have it directly linked to football in the way that it is at the moment.
It’s not healthy for people because the effects of gambling can affect people’s own mental health, they’re the people that are closest to them because it can be an unseen killer effectively of having people wanting to gamble more they it can affect their finances it can be hidden from their closest family and friends and it can be devastating.
And there’s a number of organizations out there that we are linking up with as in this campaign for stop betting ads, to say that the effects of problem gambling can result in not just harm but serious harm for not just the person that gambles but the people that are around them.
I think there’s an unhealthy relationship at the moment between professional football clubs and gambling companies.
And the evidence is clear, there’s only eight teams in the top two divisions that don’t have links with gambling companies and many of the shirt sponsors are companies that are involved in betting and gambling.
Now that legislation that was introduced and the teams themselves have removed from children’s shirts that they sell, references to gambling.
But the irony of that is that if you’re wearing a shirt yourself you don’t see what’s written on the front of your shirt so all the children see would be the adults wearing the shirt that has the name of the gambling company on it or their players when they play, they’re still wearing it and so that unhealthy relationship of those top teams with gambling companies can only make the understanding of gambling more normal in the community and this idea that it’s it’s something that just you just do and that’s unhealthy.
And we think that should change. And so that’s the reason that we are not just talking about legislation. We’re saying can we change the culture? Can even communities come together and say look there is harm from gambling and when it’s so pervasive and so linked between professional clubs and the companies sponsoring them, it doesn’t need to be that way.
There are other ways in which football can gain income from other sources that will mean that there’s a healthier presentation of football both for mental health financial health and your physical health and that’s important because football has such a big influence in our society today.
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