As gambling adverts increasingly come under the microscope in the U.K, researchers and analysts continue to suggest more ways the industry needs to do better in how it approaches its craft. 
Most recently, a report shows gambling ads targeting esports may innapropriately be catering to children.
SBCNews reports the study was commissioned by Demos and the Department of Management at the University of Bristol. In it, they analyzed hundreds of thousands of esports betting-related tweets in 2018, and found 28% of retweets or replies to tweets came from children under the age of 16.
Now, it’s not entirely surprising that children would take an interest to video games, and with it, esports. Much like how Texas Hold’em represented an aspirational goal to teenagers in the early 2000s, with tournaments paying out millions, esports now does the same thing for the youth of today, with Kyle Giersdorf, age 16, winning $3 million in the Fortnite World Cup.
The study notes though that 74% of esports betting tweets appear to breach U.K. advert regulations, “‘presenting betting as an income source’ – ‘encouraging gambling at unsociable times’ and ‘display of persons under-25 in a gambling advert’.”
As a potential solution, they recommended strengthening age verification provisions across social media platforms, which really is a call to action more for Twitter than for the gambling industry. It’s likely they’ll also push for advertising to be worded better, so as not to be attractive to under age voyeurs.
Jason Smith, Senior Demos researcher and co-author of the report, stated:
“We hope this report serves as a call to action – both to technology companies to make it easier for gambling customers to get a clear picture of what they’re getting into, and to regulators who must continue to ensure that these new actors are compliant with regulation.”
It’s easy to concede that no, we don’t want children to be offered advertising for gambling. All the same, this is a bit more of the same pearl clutching we’ve seen from the U.K. for months.
