Ban all gambling adverts, say more than half of Britons
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The actual fix to the problem of tobacco corporations profiting from free advertising is to end those tobacco corporations.
Now, remember to watch sky sports you have to pay something like £50 a month.
They then saturate half the program with adverts of people gambling.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, gambling was something James Bond did at Monte-Carlo with a vodka martini, or something my grandad did with the horses in a seedy shop next to the chippie. The only thing about gambling most people saw was some "pools" thing that was mentioned after the football results.
Now people spend £600 a year to be bombarded by messages telling them it's normal to get your phone out and put £10 on who will score the next goal when watching a football game. Maybe it is normal now, but it didn't used to be 20 years ago.
In the 1990s I remember there were slot machines in some pubs, where men would put in £1 or so and very occasionally win a huge pile of 10p coins.
Last time I checked the Annual Report, sky's revenue was something like 90% subscription, 10% adverts.
Ireland and the UK have an exception to the rule banning gambling apps, and their in-app payments. So you could gamble with money from your phone bill/prepay credit. I'd be interested to learn the history of that.
At the moment, those gambling ads are pervasive and, sadly, "normal".
"Knowing Better - Torches of Freedom"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMOyNgLSX2g&t
Well worth watching this video (and many more on this channel).
Ferrari counts among its sponsors a brand called Mission Winnow, which had prominent billboard space on the car through 2021.
Their website is a real treat: https://www.missionwinnow.com/
> Mission Winnow is a change lab focused on reframing global conversations, sparking open debate, connecting people and supporting the realization of innovative ideas.
This one specifically always gets a chuckle out of me: https://www.missionwinnow.com/en/pmi/pragmatic-approaches/co...
For a while PMI wasn't even mentioned until you dug a few pages in. And then, still only ever "PMI" until a few layers further. Some countries like France were aware enough to ban the advertising for races hosted within their jurisdiction.
A ban on gambling ads might ironically similarly be in the interests of gambling companies.
It worked. Nowadays it is not easy to see this kind of ads anymore.
I doubt a ban would happen, though. The worst offender for eyesore gambling advertisements is the state-run lottery.
As are ads for just about everything.
It isn't just the products they push. The ads themselves are toxic and are pervasively blighting our lives (and probably shortening our physical lifespans as well).
Seriously these should all be drastically curbed all across the public (physical) sphere, as has already happened in some places (e.g. São Paulo).
Some day, very far from now, when humanity finally realizes this -- we'll look at the saturation of advertisements in the 19th-21st centuries like we do on the haze of rampant air polution, pervasively contaminated water, horse manure (and dead horses clogging the streets) of bygone eras, today.
[1] The BBC is publicly funded via a license fee that is compulsory if you have a television so it has no adverts
I know the average person might not be so stupid to think they will automatically win when engaging in gambling, but the ads feel inherently dishonest and scummy nonetheless.
No, the license fee is compulsory if you have a TV that is connected up to receive off-air TV programmes.
No aerial? No licence.
If the computer is a laptop, and you have a license at home, and you don't plug it in then you're covered away from home too, fwiw.
No, it's only compulsory if you watch live TV broadcasts as they would be shown on TV. If you only watch Netflix and other streaming services(other than BBC iPlayer), or only use your TV for a games console/blu ray player then you explicitly don't need a TV licence. It takes 30 seconds to confirm you don't need the licence online and then you're exempt. I've not paid it for over 10 years at this point as we never watch actual TV in this house.
Not quite true. It has adverts on the Friday Night spot, and probably on Breakfast TV, and the One Show (evening talk show) -- they're just posed as "we chat to $actor who has a movie out now", or "$author has a book or now, here they are to talk to us". But they do disallow small businesses, and they only advertise their own media offerings (and no, they're not just 'trails' as they sometimes don't even tell you when it's on).
Maybe it's better overall, to I only see it a couple of times a year and it seems to adopt all the worst traits of commercial TV; even if there adverts are less intrusive.
Childsplay! In Germany you have to pay the equivalent fees regardless of whether you have any way to even access it, or want to, or care. It's okay, it's "only" like 18€ per month (!!!).
“Oil painting, 100cm x 50cm, $500”
Black on white text falls apart completely for any non-known object, or anything that has an aesthetic representation.
Its working well for banning tobacco ads. Just have to ban ads for gambling, alcohol, cars, etc.
It's easy enough to imagine someone else might go further with the reasoning about safety, pollution etc and decide all cars should be banned, rather than a subset.
It bothers me when I see that someone has littered their bag of McDonald's (or whatever else) and this behavior has turned into an effective form of advertising in benefit of the chain because, seeing the litter, I am reminded of the chain's existence. Wondering if other countries or even locales have done something about this as opposed to the US.
This is why those "WE BUY JUNK CARS" and "WE BUY HOUSES 4 CASH" signs are not punishable based on the owner's phone number. I could just as easily put YOUR number on one of those signs.
https://www.businessinsider.com/betting-boss-takes-pay-cut-s...
The gambling companies threatened to take the Blair government to the European Court of Competition on the grounds that it was unfair competition for National Lottery to permitted to advertise but not them [1]. The government took the threat seriously and then openly legalised gambling adverts.
[1] (Mentioned in talk by a member of the original Budd Report team which laid the path for the 2005 Gambling Act) https://youtu.be/t_isuKNKAbs?t=926
I don’t much mind if people play poker with their mates, and the lottery seems tame enough. But the betting shops have to go.
I remember when gambling casinos in the US was considered predatory and immoral and only a few states allowed it (Like Nevada and New Jersey), now it's opening up in many states because they want the money.
It's just another sign of the machine feeding itself at the expense of it's citizens.
Super depressing though. I sat down next to an old lady once and she snapped at me because the slot machine was "hers", as she planned to work three slot machines next to each other at the same time. One time, someone died of a heart attack on the ship (most of the people there were old).
Worse tho are tobacco products. Known carcinogen. Addictive. And...the government allows the sales to persist and then taxes it. Why do the right thing when you can rationalize it as someone else's moral failure? Think of all the things banned during Covid (i.e., a respiratory virus). Cigarettes was not one of those things.