Where does the UKGC get its figures from?

Gambling fever grips Premier League

The Premier League found itself under fire this week, following the news that 11 of its clubs now feature gambling companies as their front-of-shirt sponsors.

Bournemouth’s recent announcement of Asian betting company BJ88 as their front-of-shirt sponsor has pushed the tally to more than half of England’s top teams receiving sponsorship from gambling companies.?

This trend comes despite a voluntary ban of gambling sponsorships set to take effect in the 2026-27 season. But when clubs like Bournemouth are reportedly receiving nearly double the money compared to their previous deal, is it too lucrative to turn down?

Critics like campaign group The Big Step say that Premier League clubs are ignoring the severe public health issues associated with gambling.

They also expressed their fear that the voluntary ban could simply lead to sponsorship of sleeves. So what’s next – sponsored base layers at the cost of a few bob and a yellow card?

Luton Town F.C. backed The Big Step by resisting the allure of gambling sponsors, taking a ￡3m loss in the process. The team stood by their principles, but fell to the Championship last season.

With Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands banning sponsorship deals with betting companies, critics continue to urge the UK to follow suit (or shirt).

Lies, damned lies and statistics

As anyone living in the UK will have noticed this week, the Gambling Commission has revealed the results of its brand new Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) and has garnered, to say the least, a mixed reaction.

In the wake of the release, a flurry of headlines hit the mainstream media claiming the figures show problem gambling prevalence rates may be several times higher than previously thought.

On the other side of the equation, many within the gambling sector – and even the Gambling Commission itself – have questioned the accuracy of the data compared to previous gambling studies carried out.

In response to the media frenzy, The Critic’s Christopher Snowdon wrote an article attempting to explain where the radically different figures had come from.

The GSGB, he writes, was borne out of some “experimental statistics” from the UKGC, which suggested a problem gambling rate of around 2.5% in Great Britain, compared to a much lower rate closer to 0.5% usually seen in previous studies.

The leap, Snowdon suggests, comes as the regulator decided to change its survey methodology, from a face-to-face and telephone-based setup to carrying out the survey entirely online.

This, he suggests, “despite it being well established that online surveys over-estimate gambling harm.”

To carry out the survey, he explains, letters were randomly sent to some 37,000 addresses, asking residents if they would like to take part in an online survey about gambling.

Only 19% of those invited agreed to take part in the survey.

“When four out of five people refuse to take part in your survey, you no longer have a random sample of the population,” Snowdon suggests.

Instead, given that the survey is explicitly focused on gambling, he goes on to argue that only those with a particular interest in the topic would have agreed to take part.

That, in turn, would give higher figures for questions such as the prevalence of gambling harm, given that the sample is biased towards more frequent gamblers.

And, “Despite the Gambling Commission explicitly stating that the figures in the survey cannot be used ‘to gross up the prevalence of problem gambling’, The Guardian reports that a 2.5% prevalence rate ‘would equate to 1.3 million people’”.

With the mainstream media blatantly flouting the Commission’s own advice on how to interpret the statistics, it’s been easy for the figures to be taken out of context and misused.

Readers are encouraged to view this thorough assessment of the survey in full, to best understand how and why the new figures look so different from the old ones.

Who let the dogs out?

Elsewhere, The Independent brought us a story from Scotland, where the legal status of greyhound racing could apparently be brought into question.

Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) Mark Ruskell has introduced a bill which would outlaw the sport in Scotland, making it a criminal offence to permit greyhounds to compete in races.

The article points to data from last year, which showed 109 greyhounds died trackside in the UK while 4,238 suffered injuries.

“My Bill aims to protect greyhounds from the many risks that come from being forced to race around tracks at high speed,” said Ruskell.

Public opinion is “on our side,” he added, saying racecourse owners and the wider industry should “listen hard and to stand up for Scotland’s greyhounds by putting paws before profit and ending the races for good.”

Now the bill has garnered sufficient support to be introduced to the Scottish Parliament, Ruskell argues “The writing is on the wall for greyhound racing in Scotland, it’s time for us to put the wellbeing of these wonderful dogs ahead of gambling company profits.”

In response, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain suggested the data being used to support the ban was “misleading and inaccurate”.

“We also note that the Scottish Government has recently said, at this time, they are not persuaded of the need to ban greyhound racing in Scotland,” the racing regulator said.

Finally, it added: “Scotland currently has no licensed greyhound racecourses and we continue to work with those in Holyrood to set out the extensive welfare protections that would be offered under our own existing regulatory regime.”

Given Scotland doesn’t currently operate any greyhound racing, it seems the bill might not have such a huge impact after all.

?????? ???????? ???? ?????????????????? ???? ?????? ?????? ???? ???????? ?????????????? ???????? ???? NEXT.io . ???? ???????????????? ?????? ????????'?? ???????? ?????????????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ?????????????? ???????????? ???????????????????????? ???? ???????? ?????? ??????'?? ???????? ????!

???????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????????????? ???? ???????? ???? ???? ???????? ???????? ?????? ?????????????? ???????? ???? ?????? ????????????????, ???? ???????????? ?????????? ?????? website .