Lords committee calls for comprehensive gambling advertising ban

The committee expects a response within two months, and has set out a full fallback list if ministers reject the headline recommendation.

Advertising is the part of the 2020 Lords gambling inquiry that has gone largely unaddressed, even as the 2023 White Paper and the statutory levy moved other areas of policy forward. On 17 September 2026, the House of Lords Liaison Committee returned to it, publishing a follow-up report that asks ministers to ban gambling advertising outright and to abandon the objective of growing the sector.

What the committee recommends

The report, Gambling Harm—Time for Action: Follow-up report, published as HL Paper 52, carries 175 numbered conclusions and recommendations, drawn from 18 written submissions and one evidence meeting on 17 June 2026, consisting of three panels.

The report’s summary states the case in one line:

‘A comprehensive ban on gambling advertising represents the most effective policy option to advance meaningfully the Government’s aim of reducing gambling harms.’

It goes on to recommend that the Government implement such a ban as soon as practicable. The formal recommendation is narrower. The committee says the Government should ensure it has the powers to implement a ban should it choose to do so, and should evaluate options for how it might be implemented, adding that action short of a comprehensive ban necessarily entails a higher tolerance for the risks posed by gambling advertising.

The committee also tells ministers to drop the objective of facilitating growth in the gambling industry, saying no convincing evidence has been provided that it can be pursued alongside harm reduction.

The committee answers the industry’s central counter-argument, too. It says:

• It did not receive strong evidence to support claims that restrictions on advertising by licensed operators would displace customers to the illegal market.
• Concerns over the illegal market must not become a barrier to addressing the harms generated by the licensed sector, alongside strengthened efforts to tackle unlicensed operators.

The fallback list if ministers refuse

If ministers do not pursue a comprehensive ban, or during a transition to one, the committee wants a set of targeted measures instead:

• A single statutory regulator for all forms of gambling advertising, with robust enforcement powers and the ability to restrict particular advertising channels and classes of advertising. The Gambling Commission, the committee says, appears to be the most suitable body.
• An end to gambling advertising on kit and at venues, covering shirts, any other part of a team’s kit, and in or near sports grounds, including sports programmes. The committee wants this extended to training kits to reduce the risk of displacement into other formats.
• A consultation on a transition period of several years for clubs below the Premier League and in other sports.
• A television restriction on gambling advertisements in broadcasts of sporting events, which the committee asks ministers to consider, applying irrespective of the watershed and including on demand. Dedicated horse racing and greyhound racing programming would be exempt.
• Comprehensive bans on inducements, direct marketing and content marketing, the direct marketing ban covering both operators and third-party affiliates, and the content marketing ban covering operators’ own social media accounts. 

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) should revise its code to prohibit the term ‘free bet’ and related formulations. A licensing regime for affiliates should be established and run by the Gambling Commission, with licensed affiliates allowed to promote only licensed operators. 

The committee also asks ministers to consider prohibiting influencers and content creators from promoting licensed operators, and says that if they are not covered by a wider ban, they should be refused licences under that regime. 

One recommendation targets the audience rather than the channel. At paragraph 806, the committee asks for a mandatory restriction on serving gambling advertising to under-25s, and for the CAP and Broadcast CAP (BCAP) codes to be updated so that the ‘strong appeal’ test protects under-25s rather than under-18s.

Lotteries are left open. The committee took no evidence on lottery advertising and asks the Government to assess the level of risk associated with it before deciding whether it falls within any ban.

The evidence, and the disputes over it

The report records considerably more disagreement over the numbers than the summary conveys. 

On prevalence, it cites the Gambling Commission’s third annual Gambling Survey for Great Britain, published on 16 July 2026, which put approximately 2.4% of adults aged 18 and over at a Problem Gambling Severity Index score of eight or more, equivalent to between 1.0 and 1.5 million adults, and stable across the survey’s three years.

For under-18s, it cites the 2025 Young People and Gambling survey, in which 1.2% of 11 to 17 year-olds scored four or more on a youth-adapted screen, equivalent to around 68,000 young people. 

Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners challenged that screen, arguing its criteria mostly measure risky behaviours rather than harms, and that participation in age-restricted activities is ‘extraordinarily low’. The report records his argument that the claim 80,000 schoolchildren are harmed by gambling rested on 25 children in the 2023 survey. The Gambling Commission defended its methodology, calling the 2025 report ‘robust, in line with best practice in the field’. 

Advertising spend is contested in the same way. 

Dr Raffaello Rossi of the University of Bristol told the committee the industry spends around £2 billion a year on gambling advertising. 

The Betting and Gaming Council disputed that, arguing the figure does not separate regulated from illegal spend, and citing World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) work splitting the total into about £1.1 billion for the regulated sector and £800 million to £900 million for the illegal one, plus a WARC study it published in April 2026 forecasting a 9.2% fall in regulated-company spend to £1.05 billion this year. 

The committee concluded that spend appears to be decreasing but remains considerable, that the volume of online advertising has risen since 2020, and that it seems highly likely that exposure has increased with it. 

Where the Government stands

Baroness Twycross, Minister for Museums, Heritage and Gambling, told the committee in oral evidence on 17 June 2026 that the Government had no plans to legislate on advertising at this time, and set out why:

‘However, just going back to the point I made earlier about the need for evidence-based policy-making, it is currently hard, despite the plethora of research, to establish a very clear causal link that suggests that advertising does lead to increased levels of gambling-related harm.’

She pointed instead to a levy-funded research fellow embedded at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) whose work focuses on gambling advertising, and to the Illegal Gambling Taskforce. 

A legal obstacle sits behind the advertising question. Section 328 of the Gambling Act 2005 lets the Secretary of State control gambling advertising through secondary legislation, but section 333(6) stops those powers from reaching online advertising carried by platforms established in the EEA. Removing that limit needs primary legislation, which the Government told the committee it is still exploring. 

The effect shows in its consultation on banning unlicensed gambling sponsorship, which ran from 15 July to 9 September 2026: the proposed ban will not apply to online advertising or sponsorship, because extending it there would require primary legislation. European Gaming covered the public health submission to that consultation, which pressed DCMS to widen it to licensed operators. 

The economic case on both sides

The committee does not claim a ban would be painless. It concludes restrictions would be highly likely to have a negative net economic impact on the sector, calls that a necessary policy choice, and sets against it a case for long-term benefits from reduced harm and reallocated spend.

One strand comes from a study led by Dr Damon Morris, published in Addiction in 2026. Lord Foster of Bath, a member of the former committee and acting former Chair, repeated the finding in the committee’s announcement of the report:

‘A ban on most gambling advertising would reduce gambling and therefore reduce problem gambling and the serious harm it causes. We are clear that this would shrink, rather than grow, the gambling sector and that this would make a positive difference to millions of people across the country.

‘There are clear health and economic benefits to reducing participation in gambling, with a recent study by the Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research estimating that a 10% reduction in spending on gambling could lead to an increase in GVA of £1.25 billion and create over 22,000 jobs.’

The Betting and Gaming Council puts the regulated sector’s contribution at more than 109,000 jobs, £6.8 billion to the UK economy, and over £4 billion in tax a year, figures it set out alongside its forecast for illegal Premier League betting in August. 

Michael Clohisy, sports attorney and adviser at Quintel Intelligence, told European Gaming earlier this month that he expects Parliament to resist going further:

‘I suspect lawmakers in Parliament remain hesitant to institute a more expanded and/or blanket ban including “licensed” and online digital platforms due to enormous political, policy, and economic pressure from stakeholders and powerful lobbyists in sport (e.g., Premier League clubs), media, and especially gambling/sports betting who spend an estimated several billion annually.’

What happens next

The committee says it looks forward to a comprehensive Government response within the usual two-month deadline. Select committee recommendations do not bind ministers, and the report sets no timetable of its own.

Two things are worth watching. 

The first is whether the Government finds a legislative vehicle to fix the section 333(6) limit, which the committee says it should prioritise and set a clear timetable for. Without that, online advertising carried by EEA-established platforms stays beyond secondary legislation. 

The second is the fallback list, which the committee wants adopted in the absence of a comprehensive ban or during a transition to one.

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