Premier League shirt ban cut live gambling ads by just 10.5%

Premier League clubs no longer carry gambling sponsors on the front of their matchday shirts, but fans watching on TV saw almost as much gambling marketing as before. That is the main finding of the fourth annual University of Bristol count of the league's opening weekend, published on 21 October. The researchers estimate the shirt-front restriction reduced gambling messages during live matches by just 10.5%.

The restriction is not a law or a Gambling Commission rule. Premier League clubs agreed to it voluntarily in 2023, and it took effect at the start of the 2026/27 season. According to the university, gambling marketing in the UK is regulated through a mixture of self-regulation, via the Advertising Standards Authority, and voluntary industry codes.

What the researchers counted

The team analysed every Premier League match broadcast live in the UK over the opening weekend, 21 to 24 August 2026, plus 15 hours of Sky Sports News and 15 hours of talkSPORT radio. They also reviewed organic and paid social media posts from the ten gambling brands with the largest followings.

They recorded 15,571 gambling messages in total. That is lower than in 2024 (29,145) and 2025 (27,440), but about 42% more than the 10,999 counted in 2023, before the shirt restriction was agreed.

Across seven live matches, viewers saw 11,205 gambling messages. At least one was on screen for a total of 5 hours and 16 minutes, almost a fifth of the broadcast time. Newcastle United against Liverpool had the most, 2,702 messages, more than 12 per minute. On Sky Sports News the researchers counted 2,637 messages; on talkSPORT, 207, with at least one gambling advert in every commercial break.

Where the ads went

The shirt fronts were cleared: logos there fell from an average of 1,539 messages a year in 2023 to 2025 to just 9, according to the full report. But that was only a small slice to begin with. Most of this year's drop came from something else entirely: far fewer sponsorship lead-ins (in our words, the short branded clips before and after broadcasts and breaks), which fell by 87.5%. No rule targeted them. Take the lead-ins out of the comparison, and live-match gambling messages fell by only 10.5%.

Meanwhile, some branding simply moved. Gambling messages on shirt sleeves and training kits rose from a pre-restriction average of 122 a year to 563, an increase the report puts at 362.7% (rounded to 363% in its summary and 362% in the university's press release). Pitchside advertising, mostly the electronic boards along the touchline, made up 72% of all messages during live matches.

"This cannot be presented as a success for self-regulation," said project lead Dr Raffaello Rossi, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bristol Business School. "The front of shirt ban was effective in removing gambling logos from shirt fronts, but it did not remove them from football."

Social media and the 18 to 24 group

The researchers found 1,023 paid gambling adverts on Facebook and Instagram, with an estimated combined UK reach of 153.2 million accounts. Accounts aged 18 to 24 made up 16.6 million instances of that reach, more than 10% of the total. Rossi noted that the industry code requires paid digital ads to target people aged 25 and over unless reliable age checks are in place, and said the list of exempt platforms sits on a separate, undated Betting and Gaming Council webpage that was changed to add Instagram after parliamentary scrutiny.

The study also found that 93% of gambling content marketing was not clearly identifiable as advertising, and that unlicensed gambling brands still gained exposure through the Premier League.

The UK stands out

Across four years of data, Premier League broadcasts averaged 2,449 gambling messages per game. The researchers' comparison puts German Bundesliga coverage at 1,677, and NBA and NHL coverage at 483 in the United States and 505 in Canada.

Reactions

Rossi presented the findings to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Gambling Reform on 21 October. Its co-chair, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, said the shirt restriction "has barely scratched the surface" and that the group is calling on the government for more stringent regulation of gambling advertising. Former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton and his wife Steph, patrons of the research project, welcomed the removal of shirt-front logos but said "more needs to be done", especially around young people.

A Premier League spokesperson told The Independent that the league is "the first UK sports league to take this step voluntarily" and that the measure sits alongside football's Gambling Code of Conduct and annual monitoring of clubs' compliance. A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) welcomed the shirt ban but said the government is concerned that unlicensed operators can still sponsor clubs in other ways, and is "now working on banning unlicensed operators from sponsorship deals in British sport".

The study was funded by the University of Bristol.

For more on UK gambling advertising and player protection, see our coverage of the Lords committee's call for a comprehensive gambling advertising ban, Entain's call to ban unlicensed operators from UK sports sponsorship, YouTube opening its Masthead ad slot to gambling ads and what the UKGC deposit-limit rules changed on 30 September.