123EasyasBFC wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:42 am
That is literally the reply of someone who tried to use a link that had nothing to do with the discussion and has no argument back, poor attempt, you couldn’t answer the part about alcohol. I have no feelings either way about the board/ownership, my opinion on which this thread is about, is that i don’t have any problem in any ownership taking the biggest shirt deal they can, nobody is telling you that you have to agree with me.
But if you want to argue and want to go out looking for an argument then using something relevant to the posts would be better
How can an article which references the owners intention to review the clubs relationship with gambling companies not be relevant to this thread discussion ?
Of course the current owners have done nothing different to the previous owners in having gambling firms as sponsors - but my own personal view is I would prefer both of the ownerships to have not gone down this route.
The growth in betting companies and online betting has had a direct impact on the significant increases in gambling addiction in this country. The growth in gambling addiction has contributed towards the growth in suicide rates - especially amongst the younger male generation.
Revenues and profits for online betting have never been higher. Spend on advertising and sponsorship by these firms not surprisingly has also never been higher.
What do these betting firms add to our economy ? Very little - the number of people they employ is not significant (for many of the uk firms it’s going down). Many are overseas companies and many of the old uk firms avoid tax where they possibly can by registering overseas.
That doesn’t mean that everyone who bets is an addict - but the number of people who bet has grown significantly and so has the number of addicts. Not sure how anyone can argue there is no correlation with the number of online platforms and companies and the amount of advertising and sponsorship.
Of course the alcohol advertising argument is often used. Personally that’s an easy one to answer for me. I’d ban that too in terms of shirt and other sponsorship in the same way we did with tobacco.
All that said I would rather this be via regulation and across football and sport. It’s hard enough for clubs like Burnley to compete - almost impossible. For us as an individual club to take a moral stance against this will just be to our detriment and whilst it might get some positive publicity and also highlight gambling addiction issues this will be short lived and will have little or no direct impact on the issue of gambling addiction. That can only be through a series of measures brought in by the government of which stopping advertising and sponsorship in sport is just one measure.