This week the ASA announced new rules governing the use of sportspeople and celebrities in betting and gaming advertisements.

You can read the Betting and Gaming Council CEO Michael Dugher’s response to these changes below:

Betting and Gaming Council CEO, Michael Dugher, said: “The BGC supports these changes not least because they build on a whole range of measures we have led in recent times to drive up standards and ensure further protections in advertising.

“In 2019, BGC members introduced the whistle-to-whistle ban on TV betting commercials during live sport before the 9pm watershed, which led to the number of such ads being seen by young people at that time falling by 97 per cent. Our members also introduced new age gating rules on advertising on social platforms, restricting the ads to those aged 25 and over for most sites.

“It is worth remembering that according to the Gambling Commission, the proportion of young people who gambled in a previous seven day period fell from 23 per cent in 2011 to 11 per cent in 2019. The most popular forms of betting by young people are playing cards, scratchcards, bets between friends and fruit machines – not with BGC members. The BGC take a zero tolerance approach to gambling by those under the age of 18 and we enforce the toughest possible action.

“The regulated betting and gaming industry is determined to promote safer gambling and greater customer protection - unlike the unsafe and growing online black market, which has none of the safeguards that apply and will apply to BGC members.”