Number of Children Exposed To Gambling Ads Drops, New Report Suggests
The number of children exposed to gambling advertisements has dropped, a new report has revealed.
Today (February 1st), the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) released their yearly report on children’s exposure to age-restricted television ads and revealed that children today are exposed to fewer advertisements than they were five years ago.
The ASA report, titled Children’s Exposure to Age-restricted TV Ads, details how many gambling, alcohol and junk food advertisements children were exposed to between 2008 and 2017.
According to the report, children were exposed to an average of 2.2 gambling ads per week in 2018, a number which swiftly rose and peaked at 4.4 ads per week in 2013. In 2017, the number had dropped to 2.8 ads per week, signalling a 37.3% decline.
ASA’s report revealed that, at its peak in 2013, children mostly saw bingo advertisements followed by lottery and scratchcards, sports betting and then casino advertisements.
Guy Parker, the Chief Executive at the Advertising Standards Authority, said in a statement: “Protecting children has always been at the heart of our regulation. These findings show that in recent years, children’s exposure to TV ads for alcohol, gambling and food and soft drink products high in fat, salt or sugar is declining.
“We’re not complacent though and we’ll continue to actively monitor and report on this important area of work. Our next focus will be to examine whether the rules are working in the same way online and we’ll report on that later in 2019.”
ASA’s Latest Report
The report also found that compared to adults, children’s exposure to gambling advertisements has fallen year-on-year from 39% in 2008 to 20% in 2017 which means that, in 2017, children saw around one gambling advertisement for every five seen by adults.
In addition, these gambling advertisements made up less than 2% of the television ads children saw during the 2008-2017 period, totalling at an estimated 65.2 seconds per week.
The news comes after several sports betting companies agreed to a ban on the gambling advertisements shown during live sports games. The ban was confirmed by the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling (IRGR) in December and is expected to come into effect later this year.