Comment: UK's gambling advertising debate is a mess
Jason Chess, partner at London law firm Wiggin, hits back at the recent media criticism surrounding gambling advertising
Despite the enormous amount of blood and treasure spent on social responsibility “ and notwithstanding the consistently flat problem gambling numbers in the prevalence surveys “ the industry is at present losing the public argument in the UK.
Let us be clear that even one instance of problem gambling is too much, and that the prevalence statistics “ favourable to the industry though they may be “ should never be allowed to obscure the genuine human difficulties that irresponsible gambling can cause.
But, as a senior gambling regulator recently remarked to me, there are plenty of things in society that can give rise to unwise human behaviour “ pornography, misconceptions of body image, HFSS foods, alcohol, social networks and so on. Humans can abuse almost anything you choose to give them and gambling is no different.
We know that in the case of gambling it is no exaggeration to say the industry generally bends over backwards to interact responsibly with problem customers.
The rot seems to have set in with the petering out of political support for gambling that occurred with the fall of Tony Blair. Since that time, gambling seems to have become something of an embarrassment for the DCMS.
The gossip I hear is that Hugh Robertson whilst at the DCMS didn’t even like to hear it mentioned, and regardless of the Gambling Commission’s faults, some of the rubbish thrown at its CEO Jenny Williams by the CMS Select Committee last year was nothing short of disgraceful.
I have spoken at conferences with participants whom I would loosely call the anti-gambling lobby and am consistently astonished that they appear to have no idea of the weight of mandatory social responsibility that regulation attaches to licensed operators “ they seem to think that gambling companies are evil unregulated cowboys operating in some unlicensed unregulated cyber-equivalent of Somalia or Afghanistan. One speaker didn’t know that advertising to the self-excluded was prohibited, for example, and wanted it ‘banned’. Surely if you want to attack something, you should inform yourself about it first?
The advertising watershed argument is a good example of the problems. The ASA imposed a draconian set of editorial standards upon gambling advertising in the wake of the 2005 Act. I admire the ingenuity of the advertising execs who manage to create gambling ads containing anything positive about the product.
Not content with the next-to-unlimited discretion already inherent in the language of the CAP/BCAP restrictions, the ASA has shown itself ready to distort common sense even further by making ridiculously subjective decisions “ for example refusing to accept that the hilarious 2009 Ladbrokes shark ad was humorous after receiving one rather sad complaint.
The authorities have the power to take down pretty much any advertising material they don’t like already, and upon whatever capricious grounds they choose. This is apparently insufficient. During the progress of the current PoC legislation Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Collins of Highbury sought to go further and require the Government to undertake a survey of pre-watershed gambling advertising, not motivated, one assumes, by the desire to see more of it.
What would have been nice, for an industry that contributes so much to the digital economy and the exchequer, would have been a firm ministerial response to these concerns. Instead, Maria Miller is reported as voicing her own concerns at the ‘seemingly constant’ gambling advertisements on television and is ‘pledging changes’ to ensure that ‘children and the vulnerable are protected’, much to the pleasure of the newspapers who were happy to report the ‘loophole’ in ‘Labour’s controversial Gambling Act’ that allowed gambling advertising during sports events”¦ as if bookies didn’t advertise prior to 2007 and as if the Government had not already pulled the industry around the table to produce the current voluntary ‘Industry Code’.
The public debate on gambling in the UK is a mess. My experience is that there is a high level of ignorance. There is a palpable absence of political support, including for the Gambling Commission itself. It is time the industry took to the airwaves and the lobbies”¦ for if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?