Words by James Grimes, Founder of The Big Step 

“Can you keep your voice down?” 

I was 18 months into recovery from a gambling disorder, sitting in the offices of a Premier League football club when their Head of Community said this.

I was there to talk about collaborating on some gambling awareness work, with the hope of preventing any of their fans from experiencing what I did. I had been lured into gambling as a teen, all of my money taken and all of my time exploited for twelve years. I was put on a “VIP scheme” when I was on minimum wage and allowed to gamble my nan’s inheritance without a single check or question. The gambling company failed to close my account despite me telling them I was “hungry and homeless”. 

So I also wanted to ask the club why they felt it safe to have an online gambling company as their main partner, why expose their young fans to an addictive adult-only product? He understandably squirmed in his seat and said he doesn’t sign the deals. I wasn’t expecting a top-flight club to listen, but I also wasn’t expecting him to ask me to keep my voice down. 

We were sat right next to the club’s commercial department, he said, and he didn’t want them to hear. The club was happy to talk to me about raising awareness of gambling harms, but not happy to rock the boat with their multi-million-pound deals with gambling companies.

This was not a unique incident. I was days away from working with another Premier League club only for them to sign a partnership deal with a gambling company. 

It proved to be impossible to find a Premier League club without a gambling partner. At the time of writing, they all have at least one, some as many as five.

The gamblification of football is near-ubiquitous but this incident really hit home how much power the gambling industry has over the sport.

The years leading to this point had been the worst of my life. Gambling took me from a happy and motivated boy, full of hope into a depressed and anxious addict, full of shame. It slowly sucked everything from me, including my self-worth and free will. I didn’t know who I had become, nor what had happened to me. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t set limits, I didn’t understand why and I didn’t want to.

I turned 17 in 2007, around the same time when the impact of the 2005 Gambling Act started to be felt, including a tsunami of gambling marketing, especially in sport. I loved and trusted football – I had spent a lifetime watching Peterborough United home and away. I played it, coached it and was absorbed by it. When suddenly football started to tell me to gamble – specifically with the companies advertised on shirts, in stadiums and on TV – I did. I was a teenager, and extremely susceptible to my environment.

It wasn’t until many years after then that I found myself sleeping in a train station for a couple of nights after losing everything. I was once so hungry after gambling that I roamed the streets looking for pennies. I found some but didn’t use it for the 12p noodles I had in mind – I put on a 20p bet at the bookies instead.

At 28, I reached a fork in the road. I was an addict, living in a basement with no windows and I had lost myself. I had just gambled all of my money in 20 minutes on a fixed-odds betting terminal. Again. This was it, I couldn’t imagine a life without gambling. I also couldn’t imagine a life with gambling. I don’t think I wanted to die – I just didn’t want to live like this.

Something clicked and I stopped. But it was hard. I couldn’t watch football without being triggered by the relentless inducements to gamble. I was doing everything in my power not to gamble, while my favourite sport was telling me it ‘matters more when there’s money on it.’ I had a burning sense of injustice too, because although I took responsibility for my recovery, I also knew the truth behind the brands being happily promoted at football matches. I knew what they did to me and I wanted to tell everyone.

This was when I had the idea of walking to clubs with gambling sponsors to highlight the issue and speak with clubs, fans and media. I took this idea to Gambling with Lives – a charity set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide and they have supported me to this day. This turned into what is now The Big Step – a campaign to end gambling advertising and sponsorship in football, led by people harmed by gambling.

The gamblification of football is near-ubiquitous but this incident really hit home how much power the gambling industry has over the sport.

The years leading to this point had been the worst of my life. Gambling took me from a happy and motivated boy, full of hope into a depressed and anxious addict, full of shame. It slowly sucked everything from me, including my self-worth and free will. I didn’t know who I had become, nor what had happened to me. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t set limits, I didn’t understand why and I didn’t want to.

I turned 17 in 2007, around the same time when the impact of the 2005 Gambling Act started to be felt, including a tsunami of gambling marketing, especially in sport. I loved and trusted football – I had spent a lifetime watching Peterborough United home and away. I played it, coached it and was absorbed by it. When suddenly football started to tell me to gamble – specifically with the companies advertised on shirts, in stadiums and on TV – I did. I was a teenager, and extremely susceptible to my environment.

It wasn’t until many years after then that I found myself sleeping in a train station for a couple of nights after losing everything. I was once so hungry after gambling that I roamed the streets looking for pennies. I found some but didn’t use it for the 12p noodles I had in mind – I put on a 20p bet at the bookies instead.

At 28, I reached a fork in the road. I was an addict, living in a basement with no windows and I had lost myself. I had just gambled all of my money in 20 minutes on a fixed-odds betting terminal. Again. This was it, I couldn’t imagine a life without gambling. I also couldn’t imagine a life with gambling. I don’t think I wanted to die – I just didn’t want to live like this.

Something clicked and I stopped. But it was hard. I couldn’t watch football without being triggered by the relentless inducements to gamble. I was doing everything in my power not to gamble, while my favourite sport was telling me it ‘matters more when there’s money on it.’ I had a burning sense of injustice too, because although I took responsibility for my recovery, I also knew the truth behind the brands being happily promoted at football matches. I knew what they did to me and I wanted to tell everyone.

This was when I had the idea of walking to clubs with gambling sponsors to highlight the issue and speak with clubs, fans and media. I took this idea to Gambling with Lives – a charity set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide and they have supported me to this day. This turned into what is now The Big Step – a campaign to end gambling advertising and sponsorship in football, led by people harmed by gambling.

Many of these clubs recently stood together to write to Government, saying that they do not need gambling advertising revenues. This stance has been backed up by the figures, with a NERA report suggesting a gambling sponsorship ban would cost football just 2.5% in lost revenues. 

It’s not just clubs on our side, fans overwhelmingly are too. 

We are just weeks away from the UK Government revealing their Gambling Act review white paper, which will set out their direction of travel. Admittedly, we are up against a powerful lobby desperate to maintain the harmful status quo. Is it any wonder a report influenced by the gambling industry found that gambling advertising in football doesn’t influence participation in gambling? You couldn’t write it (or you could – for the right price). I was delighted to see that this study was discredited recently. Why would an industry spend £1.5billion on advertising if it had no impact on behaviour?

The evidence of harm is clear, and it is very welcome that football is slowly moving away from gambling sponsorship. But this can’t be down to a handful of clubs to do the right thing. The time to act is now and there’s no time to waste. We get so many messages from young people whose lives have already been destroyed by gambling, just like mine was. Football is nearly always the starting point, with addiction and mental and financial ruin following. Yes, we can all raise awareness of the risks and signpost towards support, but we can’t educate or treat our way out of this. The gambling industry, with a complicit football industry, must stop throwing millions of young people into the water for others to stop them drowning.

The government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset the relationship between gambling and football. This relationship doesn’t need to end – adults should be able to place a bet on the match if they wish. But gambling shouldn’t be encouraged in front of young people, especially not on their heroes’ shirts and in their favourite stadiums. Until that happens, I won’t “keep my voice down.”