British World Cup viewers "were exposed to almost 90 minutes of betting adverts during the tournament," prompting claims that children "are being bombarded with messages encouraging them to gamble," according to Duncan, Davies & Sweney of the London GUARDIAN. From the beginning of the tournament to England’s semifinal clash with Croatia, ITV carried more than eight-and-a-half hours of advertisements, of which "just under" an hour-and-a-half "were advertising betting." That is equivalent to 17% of World Cup ad breaks, "or roughly one minute in every six," with the 172 betting spots combined "lasting nearly the length of a football match." Bookmakers and online casino companies enjoyed one-and-a-half times as much screen time as alcohol firms and "almost four times that of fast food outlets." A government review of gambling regulation published earlier this year "shied away from suggesting curbs on gambling adverts, citing insufficient evidence" that adverts for betting "were causing harm to children and vulnerable people." But Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, and the GambleAware charity said that this was "partly due to a lack of funding for research into gambling adverts" since they were deregulated in '07, under former PM Tony Blair’s government. Watson: "One of the only downsides to this brilliant World Cup has been the bombardment of gambling advertising on TV and social media that thousands of children will have been exposed to." He added that Labour "would impose a mandatory levy on the industry" to fund increased research, education and treatment of gambling addiction and the effects of advertising (GUARDIAN, 7/15).
