UK researchers report that the warning message being attached to gambling advertisements on TV have no measurable effect in reducing the amount of people betting or bringing down their betting activity.
This comes from a recent study done by the University of Warwick. Their study focused on measuring the impact of how the industry’s responsible gambling slogan, “When the fun stops, Stop” was working.
The university’s psychology department tested 506 Premier Football League fans who had experience in sports betting. The respondents were separated into two groups and asked to place bets after they viewed the adverts. The main difference between the two groups was that one of them viewed gambling ads that had the warning slogan while the other group did not.
The results were rather surprising as it showed that the group who saw the gambling warning message placed bets more often than those who did not. Researchers pointed out that the visual design of the gambling ad has the word “fun” notably larger than all of the other words in the message but there was no major impact.
Dr Lukasz Walasek, one of the report’s authors said that while the slogan’s purpose is to encourage more responsible gambling, it doesn’t seem to have any effect. The researchers did point out that the study and the size of the field surveyed who too small to draw any conclusive decision but the initial indications suggest that the warning was not doing the job it was intended to do.
These findings prompted a response from the gambling industry. Gillian Wilmot, who is in charge of Senet Group, the company that is behind the slogan, has something to say about the results. She said that the link between negative emotions and problem gambling was quite notable and the slogan was focused on giving young people a more “fun” way to challenge their behaviour.
She highlighted the fact that the goal of the slogan was to not stop viewers from gambling but to have gamblers to stop and reflect on their decisions. She did admit that the survey results were discouraging and said that Senet is planning to upgrade the message to give it a better focus. One of the steps is to shrink the size of the word “fun” in the visual design of the slogan.
Some analyst expect believe that the slogan is less likely to appear in the future though. This is mainly because the UK gambling industry has decided to voluntarily ban gambling ads during sporting events and are looking at shirt sponsorship’s.
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