Top-flight shirt betting ban cuts logo visibility by 10.5%, study finds

Research from the University of Bristol indicates that barring betting firms from front-of-shirt deals cut the visibility of gambling logos by only 10.5 per cent. The work came out of the university's Hub for Gambling Harms Research and logged 15,571 gambling messages across the first weekend of the 2026/27 campaign. Campaigners have responded by renewing their demand for advertising restrictions to be made compulsory.

Across the broadcasts, gambling-related content stayed on screen for a combined five hours and 16 minutes, the researchers calculated. Live match coverage drew 72 per cent of its gambling messages from pitchside advertising, and sleeve deals promoting gambling grew by 362 per cent against earlier years. Training kit arrangements and collaborations on social media were identified as additional channels. In 2023, 19 of the league's 20 clubs backed the front-of-shirt prohibition.

Dr Raffaello Rossi, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bristol Business School and Co-Director of Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research, rejected the idea that the arrangement showed self-regulation working. In his words: "This cannot be presented as a success for self-regulation." He added that broadcasts of top-flight English matches carried more gambling messages per game than any other jurisdiction examined, naming Germany, Canada and the US among the comparisons, and argued for a more effective response.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Reform, joined the Coalition to End Gambling Ads in urging the government to act once the findings appeared. He said: "These findings are further evidence that the voluntary approach to gambling advertising in football is failing." Supporters, he went on, are still shown thousands of gambling messages while top-flight English games are broadcast, and the shirt-front measure had barely scratched the surface of the issue.

According to the report, critics have raised doubts about how the research was carried out, since each appearance of a gambling message in a live broadcast was tallied, so one advert or logo might be counted several times across a single match. The ban was voluntary and was unveiled in 2023 as a way of pre-empting compulsory rules during the Gambling Act review. This is the fourth piece of work in which the university has followed gambling marketing in top-flight English broadcasts over four years.

Even where bans are compulsory, as in Italy and Belgium, the report observed that clubs and operators have discovered ways around them, for instance by displaying logos of associated brands or foundations instead of the betting brands themselves. Betting companies still hold partnerships with 19 of the 20 clubs in the top-flight English league and 19 of the 24 in the Championship, it said. At the same time, the UK's regulated gambling industry keeps pressing for a proposed prohibition on unlicensed gambling sponsorship to be brought in.