New research published by Maynooth University and Ulster University has found that young people who live on both sides of the border in Ireland are exposed to extremely high levels of gambling marketing when viewing some national and international sporting events. The report also finds that traditional advertising is only a small part of the marketing strategy around sporting events. Companies increasingly use social media video highlights to draw young people into gambling promotions.

The project examined the exposure of young people (aged 14-24) on the island of Ireland to gambling marketing content while consuming their favourite sports on television and social media, and the marketing strategies used by sports and gambling companies through these media channels to promote their services.

Young people, including children under 18 years, are accessing this content on television but increasingly, and repeatedly over time, via social media on their mobile phones. They are consuming and sharing sports highlights and sports information across a range of social media apps, and this includes gambling marketing content. This is in addition to gambling marketing on billboards and shops in towns, villages and cities throughout the country.

The research also found that gambling marketing saturation varies considerably across sports, channels and platforms. Gambling marketing was most prevalent in darts and horseracing television programmes, which was broadcast at all times of the day both on television and social media. Other sports in the report’s sample showed much lower levels of gambling advertising. Further, gambling marketing rarely employs female sports celebrities and does not target women’s sports.

Advertising is only a small part of gambling marketing which includes the production of a range of implicit marketing and social media content designed for sharing online. These strategies include paid partnerships with sports celebrities and social media influencers. Young people are thus increasingly exposed to gambling marketing in a variety of formats on their social media platforms when consuming their favourite sports, according to the report.

The research makes the following six policy recommendations:

1. Governments in Ireland and Northern Ireland need to legislate to curtail the volume, frequency and timing of gambling marketing.
2. Regulations need to also cover the content of gambling marketing.
3. Sports organisations that receive state funding, should be required to eliminate their reliance on gambling marketing at all sporting events venues, and especially from areas visible in broadcast programmes.
4. Professional broadcast and social media practice guidelines need to be updated to recognise gambling as a public health issue and to remove gambling marketing references from live and sports highlights programmes before 21.00. They should be required to display gambling warnings if carrying gambling marketing in sports programmes.
5. Gambling marketing regulation requires a cross departmental (justice, health, sport, education) and a shared UK and Ireland approach.
6. The gambling levy in both jurisdictions needs to be used to fund a public health and education campaign focussed on 1) prevention and awareness of both individual and societal gambling harms, 2) to provide publicly funded treatments (including specific treatment programmes for young people), and to 3) fund research on the island of Ireland. Specific attention needs to be paid to promoting the awareness of gambling harms among young men.