New Study Undercuts White Paper’s Marketing Verdict

A study led by Central Queensland University with the University of Bristol has produced the first controlled evidence that personalised marketing sent to active gambling accounts, including free bets and reload offers, drives up betting activity and gambling-related harm. Published in the journal Addiction, the findings directly challenge a central claim in the UK Government’s 2023 gambling White Paper, which argued there was insufficient evidence to justify tighter marketing rules.

What’s actually changed

The research compared gamblers who had opted out of direct marketing, such as emails, push notifications and texts, with those who continued receiving it.
People with active gambling accounts who receive regular ‘free bets’ and other direct marketing offers place a lot more bets, spend far more, and suffer greater related harms than gamblers who have opted out of such offers, with those who opted out placing nearly a quarter fewer bets and spending 39% less money.

Participants who didn’t receive the direct marketing also reported 67% fewer short-term gambling harms, such as feeling less distressed by their gambling, than those exposed to it.

The study’s lead author addressed the White Paper directly.
Dr Newall said the White Paper argued there was “little need to regulate marketing, since there was no evidence of a causal link,” adding that this research changes that.
The paper was
funded by Gambling Research Australia
, giving it independent standing outside the UK regulatory system, though its findings apply directly to how British operators run their marketing.

A case study accompanying the research illustrates the stakes.
Naman Jawaid, aged 34, from Manchester, started gambling at the age of 18 after seeing a TV ad offering a free bet, and what started as a £10 bet spiralled into betting £2,000 on average daily at its peak in his early twenties.
He described how operators use behavioural data to time offers:
once you open an account, they know what type of personalised messages to send, and if you haven’t bet in a few days, they entice you with a free one.

What it means for you

UK operators are not entirely unregulated on this point already.
Under Requirement 10 of the Gambling Commission’s customer interaction guidance, operators should already prevent direct and targeted marketing and the take-up of new bonuses by customers who show strong indicators of harm.
That rule only bites once an operator has identified you as showing signs of difficulty, not before. This new evidence speaks to a much wider group: ordinary account holders who simply keep receiving free bets and reload offers as a matter of routine engagement, whether or not any harm indicators have been flagged.

If you hold an account with a UK operator, you can usually turn off marketing communications through your account settings or preference centre without closing the account itself. Based on this research, doing so is likely to reduce both how often you’re prompted to bet and how much you end up spending. It won’t affect your ability to deposit or play; it simply stops the operator from actively nudging you back in with timed offers.

The bigger picture

Marketing has been one of the slower-moving parts of the wider White Paper reform programme.
When the Gambling Act Review was launched, the government noted that gambling advertising and marketing had expanded into new channels and grown significantly since the 2005 Act came into force, and despite a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into promotions, the Gambling Commission committed to consult further on free bets and bonuses to ensure they are targeted in a socially responsible manner.
Progress since has been criticised as slow.
One assessment argued the industry has misleadingly framed the methodological difficulties of researching marketing harm as a justification to largely support the status quo, even though that status quo is as unsupported by evidence as any alternative.

This new study gives campaigners and researchers the kind of direct causal evidence that was previously said to be missing. Whether it prompts the Gambling Commission to tighten Requirement 10 into a broader default, rather than a targeted response to visible harm, is now the question facing the next stage of White Paper implementation. For players, the practical takeaway is unchanged in the meantime: the offers landing in your inbox are designed to bring you back, and the evidence now suggests they work exactly as intended.

Sources

• University of Bristol – Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm
• EurekAlert! – Study shows bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm
• Bird & Bird – Gambling White Paper: advertising and marketing
• Society for the Study of Addiction – One year on from the UK Government’s gambling White Paper: Where are we now?