Gambling advertising spend has continued to fall within the UK, led by a steep drop-off in spending on TV adverts.
Playing promoting spend from licensed UK operators has continued to fall, based on recent evaluation from the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC). The analysis, carried out by Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), discovered that playing adverts accounted for simply 2.7% of the UK’s whole promoting spend in 2024, down from 3% in 2023.
This comes alongside a warning from trade leaders that unregulated on-line adverts from unregulated, unlawful operators are a rising threat to shoppers.
Licensed operators’ playing advert spend is continuous to say no.
Impartial evaluation commissioned by the BGC reveals playing promoting was 2.7% of whole UK advert spend in 2024 (down from 3% in 2023) and has been falling steadily since 2021.
Round 20% of adverts are safer playing…
— Betting and Gaming Council (@BetGameCouncil) February 2, 2026
The autumn in official playing advert spend isn’t a brand new phenomenon, with spending on a gentle decline since 2021 to map out a drop of 1.7% year-on-year. The principle push for this decline is a £30 million discount in spending on TV adverts.
The report consists of warnings that unlawful operators are more and more utilizing unregulated means, akin to influencers, engines like google and AI-generated content material, to focus on shoppers, together with ones who could also be liable to gambling-related hurt. Many operators explicitly promote the truth that they’re ‘not on GAMSTOP’, thereby looking for to enchantment to these already liable to playing dependancy.
Promoting shifts to deal with participant safety
What’s extra, a significant shift within the sector has been placing advert spend in direction of participant safety, with 20% of all playing adverts within the UK now targeted on safer playing messaging. This enhance has seen leads to engagement, with 14% extra individuals setting deposit limits and 22% extra safer playing instruments in place throughout final yr’s Safer Playing Week.
“This impartial evaluation reveals that playing promoting by licensed operators is continuous to fall, with spend more and more targeting safer playing messaging and shopper protections,” mentioned Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council. “Our members function inside a number of the strictest promoting guidelines of any trade and proceed to boost requirements throughout the sector.
“In contrast, unlawful operators are promoting aggressively on-line with no safeguards, no age checks and no shopper protections, posing an enormous threat to shoppers. Any critical strategy to promoting should be led by proof and targeted on tackling the harmful black market.”
Featured picture: Unsplash
The publish Gambling advertising spend continues to fall in the UK led by £30M drop in TV ads appeared first on ReadWrite.
