A cross-party group of peers has concluded that the most effective way to reduce gambling harm in Britain is to stop the industry from advertising, and that the government has been “too passive” while digital marketing and paid influencers filled the gap the 2005 Gambling Act opened.

The House of Lords liaison committee’s report runs to 173 pages. Its central recommendation is a tobacco-style ban on almost all gambling advertising, with carve-outs for the National Lottery and racecourses. The report argues that a blanket prohibition would be the “most effective” route to reducing harms it lists as financial ruin, relationship breakdown and suicide — and concedes that the sector would shrink, while arguing the money would circulate elsewhere in the economy.

The numbers attached

British bookmakers, slot machine venues and casinos took £12.6bn from customers last year, according to the report’s use of official figures, and official statistics suggest up to 1.4 million people in Great Britain have a gambling problem.

Advertising spend is the mechanism the report focuses on. Before the 2005 Act, only bingo, the football pools and lotteries — including the National Lottery — could advertise on television. After it, annual industry advertising spend reached an estimated £2bn in 2024. The peers’ complaint is not that the ads exist but that they now arrive through social platforms and influencers, channels the 2005 framework was not built to police.

The industry’s answer

The Betting & Gaming Council, which lobbies for bookmakers and casinos, called the report “deeply misguided.” Its chief executive, Grainne Hurst, argued that “a blanket advertising ban would remove a key competitive advantage of being licensed and regulated while doing nothing to stop illegal operators targeting British consumers.” The council points to voluntary measures its members have taken, including a “whistle to whistle” agreement not to advertise during televised sports fixtures.

The trade body has also estimated that half of the money spent advertising gambling in Britain now comes from unlicensed offshore operators — a claim used to argue that restrictions on the legal market hand the advantage to the illicit one. The report’s authors do not dismiss that concern. Lord Foster, one of them, called the illicit market a “legitimate concern” and pointed to regulators’ ongoing work against rogue sites, adding that it “should not deflect us from the need to address the harm that is being created by the legal market.”

Both sides, then, are making a market-share argument. The peers say shrink the licensed market and the harm shrinks with it. The BGC says shrink the licensed market and the unlicensed one grows instead. Neither claim rests on public, methodologically transparent figures: the £2bn spend estimate and the BGC’s half-from-offshore estimate are rough industry-side numbers, and the BGC has an interest in the second one.

Who is moving

The political centre of gravity has shifted since Blair’s government liberalised this market on the argument that regulated gambling was a legitimate leisure industry that would create jobs. Andy Burnham — now pushing for powers for councils to block new betting shops and “slot farms” on high streets — has said he wants to “relegate gambling sponsorship of sport to the history books.” The Guardian, which stopped accepting gambling advertising in 2024 except for the National Lottery, reported the peers’ findings.