Reportedly, Researchers at the University of Bristol counted 15,571 gambling references across television, radio and social media during the opening weekend of the 2026/27 English top-flight season. The voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsors, agreed by clubs in 2023, cut chest-shirt references to nine from an average of 1,539, but exposure shifted to training wear, sleeves and electronic boards.
Researchers at the University of Bristol counted 15,571 gambling references across television, radio and social media during the opening weekend of the 2026/27 English top-flight season. The study covered seven live matches, 15 hours of Sky Sports News, 15 hours of TalkSport and posts and advertisements from 10 major gambling brands on social media, the report said. The researchers count each visible logo or other reference to a gambling brand as a separate reference, and where several identical advertising boards were on screen at once they counted the maximum number of visible logos. The 15,571 references are therefore not 15,571 separately produced advertisements and do not indicate how many references any individual viewer saw.