00:00 What does this all say about the relationship between football and gambling?
00:06 Obviously many Premier League teams and championships all have gambling companies as their shared
00:10 sponsors.
00:11 It's so ingrained into the UK game.
00:14 You see adverts all the time between matches etc.
00:18 Does something need to change with the way that the football culture in this country
00:23 and gambling go hand in hand?
00:24 Of course there is going to be a ban on shared sponsors eventually but even now when you're
00:28 seeing situations like this and perhaps the help isn't given enough to those who need
00:32 it especially at the top of the game, what do you think should be changing?
00:38 Gambling and football has a really complicated relationship and there's so many different
00:43 layers to it.
00:44 Like I said I've written a lot of pieces on it recently that have tried to unpick each
00:48 individual strand.
00:49 I'll start off with the sponsorship.
00:52 You can ban shirt sponsors from appearing on the front of a club's shirt but they're
00:57 still going to be there on the sleeve.
00:59 So that comes into effect I think it's from the 2026 to 2027 season.
01:02 So all you're really doing is moving the betting company's logo to a different part of the
01:06 shirt.
01:07 I'd say the impact of that is going to be very negligible.
01:10 You're also still going to be allowed to advertise those companies on television screens and
01:15 hoardings all around the stadium.
01:16 So again it's not as if their presence is suddenly going to disappear, it's just going
01:20 to be in a slightly different way.
01:22 That is definitely something that needs to be addressed long term but then you have conversations
01:26 with executives at the top of the game who say gambling brings in a lot of money into
01:30 football and how do you replicate that?
01:33 So it's an unhealthy relationship, everybody admits that, but it's almost football and
01:38 especially the Premier League has just become so used to relying on that money and having
01:42 the best product in the world that they seem to be reluctant to cut that avenue of money
01:47 off.
01:48 As I've mentioned I've spoken to a lot of players about football and betting and they
01:52 all seem to say that football has its unique pressures.
01:55 It's obviously you're in the limelight, you've got to deal with fans, the media, your own
02:00 pressures and the way a lot of players deal with that is by gambling unfortunately and
02:05 that's because footballers, you're not really going to see them go out and drink alcohol,
02:09 you're not going to see them go out and have junk food, you're not going to see them in
02:11 a club.
02:12 They're all ways that maybe you and I would blow off some steam and those kind of avenues
02:16 are shut off to footballers whereas gambling on a smartphone or on their laptop at home
02:22 is quite an easy thing to do.
02:23 So when I was having my conversations with Stephen Corker and people from Epic Risk Management
02:27 who do really good work on this topic, they're talking about that culture within football
02:33 of everything being so important, of men and females feeling like they can't open up in
02:38 a really competitive environment because they don't want to show vulnerability.
02:42 That's what needs to be tackled but addressing culture is a really, really complicated thing.
02:46 It takes years and years and years to do.
02:50 Education is a part of it and I know that Tony did say in his written reasons when it
02:55 came out that he had received a little bit of education from the FA.
02:59 It obviously sounds like maybe the FA needs to do a little bit more of that.
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