I’m not keen on posting petitions but every now and then one comes along that I just can’t ignore!
and today is one of those times.
Gambling adverts!
I believe we should ban all gambling adverts because they make it so much harder for problem gamblers to recover! (i actually work with several problem gamblers at the pizza shop)
just imagine trying to quit something and every time you turn on your tv, you get that thing shoved in your face!
so yes please help those in need and sign this petition!
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You sign it. I won’t.
What next. Many things are addictive, so do you advocate banning all those too?
Alcohol and food to name just 2. Some people are even addicted to shopping…
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I would ban the people in that case Richard 
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If we went along with such a ban we might also ban ads for other addictive substances (sugar, alcohol…).
While we’re at it, should vegans be bombarded with pictures of animal derived products?
Advertising has always been about glorifying and embellishing, it is down to the viewer to make up their own mind.
Illegal drugs aren’t advertised yet plenty of people find it difficult to recover from using them.
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personally, I think we should ban gambling adverts because there just SO DAMN ANNOYING!
nd now we move on to the serious stuff!
we should at least consider banning gambling adverts that are aimed at children don’t you think?
have you never seen the candy crush gambling adverts! these are obviously aimed at children.
so to my mind, we should at the very least ban tv gambling adverts between the hours of 4 pm and 9 pm (peak child viewing time)
also,
gambling addiction is one of the worst addictions a person can have it is even more destructive than a heroin addiction and harder to break.
as I said in my OP I work alongside gambling addicts, iv seen firsthand how destructive it is!
I don’t think you can blanket ban them as it would be very difficult to justify it, as others have said that would mean banning any advert for anything considered addictive. However, I do agree there should be a watershed and also a limit on the number of adverts in one ‘ad break’. There seems to be a heavy bias towards the gambling ads and then maybe the odd perfume ad! Even the ads, telling you to set limits etc. are still advertising the gambling companies.
To be honest, unless they somehow stop it, I watch most stuff recorded and fast forward so the ads are pointless because I never see them, I wonder what percentage of people do that these days …
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The petition is to ban adverts, not gambling per se. I’d be happy to ban advertising, it’s everywhere and annoying.
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well they banned adverts for tobacco products successfully.
I would go further and also ban adverts for loans at criminal interest rates.
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I’m getting sick of adverts in general, they’re becoming less and less relevant to me as a person or to my lifestyle .
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I bet this ban request doesn’t happen
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Gambling is an exceptional case (there may be others). It’s a tax on the victims (the hard-of-thinking, if you are uncharitable).
Were it not for the fact that it would still happen but illegally and without regulation, I’d suggest banning gambling itself. Since that’s not practical, I’d ban the advertising to reduce the number of victims.
Like the tobacco companies, the bookies etc would argue that they are advertising to change customers’ allegiances, rather than create new gamblers but we know that wouldn’t be true.
The CEO of Bet365, Denise Coates, was paid £470 million in 2020. All as good as stolen from people ‘playing’ at stacked odds.
It’s immoral. We could never stop it, but we could stop facilitating this blight on families everywhere.
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They have a wheeze to stop it - streaming. Once you get into the habit of watching on demand, you’re pretty well sunk.
Yes they did that’s true so maybe there is a possibility that they can be banned.
I remember gambling was in betting shops when I was a child, I don’t even remember them having slot machines? My dad has always ‘done the horses’ but he’s only ever bet pennies and it’s a hobby to him and I remember having to wait outside the ‘bookies’ while he put a bet on, because I wasn’t allowed in, and peering through the window at the, generally, older men in there. These days children are bombarded with the adverts for bingo, betting and also ‘treasure chests’ in the games they play it’s becoming ‘the norm’ and I agree that can’t be right.
Apparently betting is something you do on the sofa with your mates and its great fun and you always win 
. It seems to have moved into the phase that smoking was in in the 70s where it was a great social thing to do even though everyone knew it was bad for them, so maybe it’s on that evolution curve and will reach the banning stage in the next few years and sports will have to find new sponsors again.
One thing I think is unacceptable is the celebrities that endorse it and jump on the band wagon, even though some of their peers have succumbed to the addiction … Yeah great you’re a multi-millionaire and you are encouraging me to bet so I ‘might’ have a life like yours; but you haven’t got to where you are by winning a few bets on a gambling website!
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Well perhaps this is not the forum for a debate about gambling, but I do think it is a very real problem, the avalanche of gambling adverts on Sky is amazing and is not doubt fuelling the serge in gambling.
I have signed the petition and I note the petition is over 42,000 of the 50,000 target.
Best regards to everyone and very best wishes for the new year.
Graham.
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There are a few ways to beat bookies and there are professional gamblers who make money, but they don’t bet like the typical gambler. And they certainly don’t bet on impulse, when drinking and socialising, or on the ‘mug’ bets that the bookies offer - accumulators at high but very poor value odds that the bookies package to basically fleece their customers.
Pros have to use multiple accounts because bookies have sophisticated software that identifies them very quickly and their account is limited or closed almost immmediately. If you can beat the bookie, they don’t want to play with you.
The gross gambling yield (total money lost) in UK was £6bn, a very bad year for the bookies owing to Covid. In 2019 it was £14bn.
If you want to beat the bookies, this is a moderately entertaining documentary (link to BBC iPlayer). My hero is the ‘courtsider’ who physically attends tennis matches, looks out for ‘slow’ umpires, and places bet on individual points between the point actually ending and the umpire entering the score in his computer.
You can actually beat the bookies and I have personally done exactly that. I have to say I have no interest in betting as I know its highly addictive but I have done it primarily because a mate has shown me how it works - otherwise I wouldn’t really know about it - and it was more of a curiosity thing. I wont recommend anyone to do it but I will explain briefly how it works.
Basically you have to use the free bet offers that the various betting companies give you - you will maximize the profit from the free offers if you don’t normally do any betting or have previous accounts with the various companies.
The first sort of bets are the “easy” ones; usually its like bet £10 get a free £10 bet etc. The way it works is that you loose as little as possible on the bet you make with your money by betting both winning and loosing sides and maximize the return on the free bet by making the biggest return by also bet on both winning and loosing side. I made about £1200 using the “easy” free bets but then its gets more difficult as the betting becomes more complicated.
I used this subscription website to basically find out which bets to do. it explains everything in much more detail than what I have done above.
Last, I’m not really endorsing betting, far from it. If you are a person that can be addicted to betting do not try it. The whole reason these companies giving out “free bets” is to lure you in. However I can personally say I have beaten the betting companies and that gives me a small satisfaction.
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the free bet thing is no different to drug dealers who will give a new person a free bag of heroin, knowing that once someone has tried it the chances are extremely high that they will become a repeat customer!
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I’m glad you took them for something!
What you are talking about I think is “arbing”. Bookies set the odds in such a way that if you bet on every horse in the race with them, on average they will win because they ensure the total of the possible odds as fractions adds up to more than 1. By picking a two horse race (or a game of tennis) and finding odds for each player with different bookmakers that (usually for a brief period of time) add up to less than 1 for the 2 possible winners, you can guarantee a modest win by backing both. However your betting patterns will give you away quite quickly if you are making a decent amount and your accounts will be closed or limited. If you make use of free bets then you can obviously make more money because one of your bets is free.
I assume you can only get one free bet per account so this is pretty small beer unless you open multiple accounts with each bookmaker. They go to some lengths to stop people making money by arbing including tracking IPs / device IDs. This can all be got around to a certain extent but if it was easy everybody would do it and the bookies wouldn’t be grossing £14 billion a year.
I one worked with an office manager who tried to get us all involved in a pools system he subscribed to, which guaranteed a win every week. None of us could see the loophole in this but we all thought it was too good to be true and nobody joined him. He did win every week - invariably less than his stake.
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There’s a lot of people making huge amounts of dosh out of this as it appeals to a certain type of person, and then they become addicted to it, but no one is forced into doing this, and the people who decide to start doing it are often old enough to take responsibilty for their own choices and actions, particularly if its affecting their family, its not totally the fault of the site owners.
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The way it works is because you play by making a bet but also you “match” that bet on the side of the bookie. The website finds the game with the right odds to achieve what you want. If I remember correctly the money you put in is a guaranteed marginal loss (sometimes can be a very small gain) but the way you make money is by using the free bet and the website to find the right bet with the right odds but then also guarantee a win by matching the bet you just made on the bookie side. (you basically make a bet on both the betting side and the matching side by the bookie). If you follow their instructions mathematically you cannot loose the bet.
However as I said I consider betting similar to drugs and any other addiction (apart from mx5’s 
) so if you have any disposition of addiction please stay away.