Gambling advertising has ‘crossed a line’ for TV sports fans, new study reveals
Gambling advertising has ‘crossed a line’ in recent years and betting firm representatives are being positioned as equal to sports experts, a new study by Clarity Strategic Research has suggested.
Speaking at Mumbrella’s Sports Marketing Summit, Clarity Strategic Research directors Alasdair Johnston and Alex Sweeney told the audience the biggest bug-bear for TV sports viewers and fans was gambling advertising.
Johnston reveals Australian sports fans have problems with gambling advertising and live betting
The 8:30 cutoff concerning gambling advertising is not really good enough because you have some families who will make a point of staying up to watch a very important fixture played on the “other side of the world”, be it a Wimbledon tennis final featuring a key player or a World Cup soccer showdown. Sometimes some expat families stay up for the fixtures that were held in high esteem in their home country such as for American expats to watch the Super Bowl.
Another practice that comes in to play with sports enthusiasts who use DVRs and enjoy the overnight fixtures is that they want to use these devices to record the whole fixture and watch the recording they made rather than a highlights package typically ran during the day. This is although they use the DVR’s picture-search functionality to bypass advertising, but some enthusiasts may play through the pre-game commentary to get a good idea about what to expect and, perhaps, to see the pre-game warmup events. The issue here is that the pre-game commentary and on-screen graphics could be used by a betting company for spruiking odds and that would go against the spirit of banning gambling advertising.
What can be investigated is the idea of extending the ban on gambling advertising beyond 8:30pm to protect the key events run over the other side of the world from odds-spruiking and gambling ads, especially in the context of DVR users or families staying up late.