Celebrities are Now Banned from Promoting Gambling In the UK

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

New laws in the UK will outlaw celebrities, influencers and social media personalities from promoting gambling brands and products. The rule changes will be introduced by the Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP) in October 2022 and aim to prevent minors from being inspired to gamble illegally at a young age.

The regulator’s new policy includes any personality considered to have a ‘strong appeal’ to a youthful audience and therefore rules out YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok stars and those who have appeared on popular reality TV shows. The director of CAP, Shahriar Coupal, commented: “By ending these practices, our new rules invite a new era for gambling ads, more particular to the adult audience they can target and more befitting of the age-restricted product they’re promoting.”

Many gambling companies have already voluntarily stopped advertising on TV before the watershed (9pm) and during live sports broadcasts. Now, campaigners want other forms of media to break away from a reliance on gambling firms. In the English Premier League, nine of the twenty teams during the 2021-22 season had a betting company sponsoring them – which means children and young adults were exposed to their branding on a weekly basis. That is expected to be another upcoming rule change when the UK government publishes their review of the Gambling Act legislation later this year.

There’s still concern that some of the most popular online platforms, including YouTube and Twitter, still allow a younger audience to see gambling content unless they proactively opt-out from seeing such promotions in their settings.

Getting Creative

Using celebrities to endorse your products and services is a tactic that businesses have deployed for over a century. For example, popular baseball stars like Babe Ruth were paid handsomely to promote tobacco as far back as the early 1900s.

The new laws will certainly affect the marketing efforts of many companies. There’s no doubt that they will need to be more creative in their marketing to overcome the loss of celebrity endorsements, with the likes of Ben Affleck previously used to promote casino gaming. It will almost certainly increase the need for gambling firms to create ‘viral’ videos and ads, promoting their various products using non-famous faces and characters.

The truth is that many gambling firms don’t have the budget or inclination to use celebrities in their marketing anyway, and some have come up with unique ways to promote themselves independently. There are many aggregator sites in the online casino space that bring together the best bonuses, promotions and games that the industry has to offer – generating traffic while offering tangible rewards to players. The popular Megaways slots, which include a game mechanic that offers more ways to win per spin, are just one part of the sector that has benefitted from aggregation. With this tactic, gamers are able to learn more about each title while keeping abreast of the latest releases.

There’s no doubt that the CAP ban on using celebrities will force gambling firms to be more creative in their efforts, but there’s no doubt that the financial savings made by not hiring a celeb can be better utilised elsewhere. Now, the creative teams within these multi-billion pound companies may finally get a chance to flex their muscle – and they won’t need to call upon a famous person to carry the load.