Earlier this year, former Premier League footballer Joey Barton was suspended from football after he admitted "placing more than 1,200 bets over a 10-year period," according to Sam Dean of the London TELEGRAPH. At least five of the bets were made on matches in which he was playing. In a lengthy statement, Barton said that football's governing bodies "need to accept there is a huge clash between their rules and the culture that surrounds the modern game, where anyone who watches football on TV or in the stadia is bombarded by marketing, advertising and sponsorship by betting companies." Barton's message "struck a chord and his words were welcomed by campaigners" including GambleAware, the charity tasked with minimizing gambling-related harm in the U.K. Two national newspapers last week ran front-page stories on the "dangers of gambling." On Monday, it was reported that children were being "exposed to a record number of gambling adverts," and on Friday, the Gambling Commission said that "more than 2 million people" in the U.K. were either "problem gamblers or at risk of addiction." Remote Gambling Association CEO Clive Hawkswood said, "We would be mad not to take notice of that growing background noise of concern." The "sheer volume of gambling adverts around live sport has been a particular source of frustration for campaigners." According to research from Nielsen, the industry has spent a total of £1.4B ($1.8B) on advertising since '12. Of that, £430M ($556.4M) has been spent on sports gambling advertising, "almost doubling" from £64M in '12 to £127M in '16. The U.K. government's "long-awaited" review of fixed-odds betting terminals, which has been delayed until later this year, has "garnered plenty of attention amid claims that bookmakers are making it too easy for problem gamblers to lose thousands of pounds in a short of space of time" (TELEGRAPH, 8/27).
