UK ASA study shows underage exposure to gambling ads is declining.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (UKASA) has revealed the results of a study that show a 40 percent decline in children’s exposure to gambling advertisements between 2013 and 2017.

Between 2008 and 2017, exposure increased 25 percent from an average in 2008 of 2.2 ads per week (the first full year in which ads for gaming and betting were allowed on TV) to 2.8 ads per week in 2017.

Compared to 2013 where children’s exposure to gambling ads peaked at an average of 4.5 ads per week, 2017’s tally of 2.8 ads per week equates to a decrease of 37.3 percent.

Children’s exposure to gambling ads, relative to adults’, has fallen year-on-year from 38.6 percent in 2008 to 19.6 percent in 2017. In other words children see, on average, about one TV ad for gambling for every five seen by adults in 2017.

Gambling ads made up less than 2 percent of all the TV ads that children saw on average every year between 2008 and 2017.

The majority of TV ads for gambling that children have seen since 2011 (the first year when the ASA can be confident about product breakdown information for gambling ads) are ads for bingo, lottery and scratchcards.

Children saw, on average, a peak of 1.9 ads per week for bingo in 2013, decreasing to 0.8 ads per week in 2017, and a peak of 1.3 ads per week for lottery and scratchcards in 2012, decreasing to 0.9 ads per week in 2017.

Children’s exposure to ads for sports-betting has decreased from an average of one ad per week in 2011 to 0.4 ads per week in 2017.

Children’s exposure to all TV ads reduced by 29.7 percent from a peak of 229.3 ads per week in 2013 to a low of 161.2 ads in 2017. Over the same period, children’s exposure to gambling ads decreased by 37.3 percent. This suggests that the decline in children’s exposure to all TV ads might account for over three-quarters of the reduction in children’s exposure to TV ads for gambling products.

Read the full report here.