Every time gambling advertising regulation comes up in the UK, and it comes up a lot, Belgium gets mentioned.
It is the European country that actually did what British politicians keep threatening to do. But despite being referenced in industry discussions for three years now, the details of what happened after Belgium pulled gambling ads off the airwaves rarely get examined with any precision. The ban took effect on 1 July 2023. The evidence is now in. And the findings are more useful for UK commercial radio than either side of the debate tends to acknowledge.
What Belgium Actually Did
The Belgian federal government issued a Royal Decree in July 2023 banning gambling advertising across all broadcast media, including television, radio, cinemas, magazines, newspapers, and public spaces. Online advertising on websites and social media was also prohibited. The ban was phased rather than instant. From 1 July 2023, all broadcast and digital advertising stopped. From 1 January 2025, gambling advertising in sports stadiums was banned. Shirt sponsorship is permitted in a limited form, not on the front, until the end of 2027, with a total ban on all gambling sponsorship in sport taking effect from 1 January 2028.
The decree also made gambling sponsorship expenses no longer tax-deductible, removing the financial incentive for operators to maintain sponsorship deals during the transition period. Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne framed the policy explicitly as a public health intervention, comparing it to Belgium’s earlier ban on tobacco advertising. “We did it well at the time for tobacco advertising, and it worked,” he said. In September 2024, Belgium went further still, raising the minimum gambling age from 18 to 21 and banning all bonus inducements under an amended Royal Decree. This was not a cautious regulatory tweak. It was a comprehensive, multi-phase dismantling of gambling’s presence in Belgian broadcast media.
Did It Work? The Evidence So Far
The results are genuinely mixed, and they deserve to be presented honestly. On the visibility front, the ban clearly delivered. An academic analysis published in Health Promotion International by researchers from Ghent University found that gambling advertising has become “significantly less visible” on Belgian TV, radio, and social media since the decree took effect. That part worked as intended.
What did not change is the size of the market. Official figures from the Belgian Gambling Authority show that the country’s gambling market generated €1.7 billion in gross gambling revenue in 2023, a 50% increase in just two years. The ban removed the advertising. It did not remove the demand. The most commonly cited fear, that a ban would push players into unregulated black markets, also failed to materialise. The Ghent researchers stated it directly: the argument that a ban drives customers to illegal gambling “is not supported by scientific evidence. No such shift has been observed in Belgium.”
Enforcement, however, has been the weak link. In 2023, only 21% of fines for gambling law breaches were actually collected. Over a five-year period, the Belgian gambling authority recovered approximately 11% of the fines it imposed, resulting in over €5 million in lost state revenue. And operators adapted quickly. Within months of the ban, gambling companies had shifted spend into loopholes the decree did not cover: corporate social responsibility communications, charity sponsorship, free prize draws that do not require a gambling account, sports podcasts hosted on their own platforms, and live streaming of matches on operator websites to drive traffic. The advertising disappeared from the radio. It reappeared in places regulators had not anticipated.
These indirect channels also make operator relationships less obvious to consumers. Finding a casino’s sister sites can reveal when several differently branded platforms share the same owner, licence or marketing infrastructure. That matters because an advertising restriction applied to one recognisable brand may have a limited effect if the same operator can redirect attention towards another brand through sponsorships, affiliate content or other channels outside traditional broadcasting.
What Belgian Football Tells UK Radio
The closest parallel to UK radio’s relationship with gambling advertising is Belgian football’s relationship with gambling sponsorship, and the numbers are instructive. Before the ban, 16 of Belgium’s 18 top-division Pro League clubs were sponsored by gambling companies. A Deloitte report found the gambling industry contributed 12.7% of total sponsorship revenue for Belgian professional football, translating to over €10 million for the 2020–2021 season. Only two clubs had no gambling sponsor – KAS Eupen, whose Qatari owners abstained for religious reasons, and Westerlo.
That 12.7% figure is the most relevant number in this article for anyone managing a UK radio station’s commercial book. If gambling occupies a comparable share of UK commercial radio’s advertising mix, then the Belgian football experience — a scramble for replacement sponsors over a phased five-year transition — is the preview UK station managers should be studying now, not when the legislation lands. Belgian football clubs had years of warning. Some diversified early and absorbed the transition. Others waited and are still adjusting. The clubs that moved first had the widest choice of replacement sponsors. The ones that waited are competing for a shrinking pool.
What This Means for UK Commercial Radio
UK commercial radio hit a record £747 million in advertising revenue in 2025, with digital audio formats growing 14.9% year-on-year to £89.5 million. The sector is in strong commercial health. But gambling remains one of the restricted advertising categories requiring additional clearance through Radiocentre, and the regulatory conversation is not getting quieter. A Parliamentary debate on gambling advertising took place on 23 April 2026. The Commons Library updated its research briefing on the same topic two days earlier. Jo Verrill has just been appointed to lead Radiocentre’s clearance team, with an accompanying opinion piece on shaping the future of trusted audio advertising. The signals are consistent.
Greater restrictions may also increase the importance of distinguishing licensed operators from offshore brands using unclear regulatory claims. Consumer guidance on how to verify a Curacao Gaming License is one example of the information that may become more prominent as gambling promotion moves away from regulated broadcast advertising and towards search results, social platforms and affiliate websites. For broadcasters, this reinforces the value of strict clearance procedures that reduce the risk of promoting operators whose licensing status cannot be independently confirmed.
What Belgium’s experience suggests is that if restrictions tighten further, gambling will not disappear from the UK. The Belgian market grew 50% in two years after the ban. The money did not evaporate. It simply stopped flowing through broadcast channels and found other routes. For UK commercial radio, that means the risk is not that gambling collapses as an industry. The risk is that gambling stops paying for radio airtime while continuing to grow everywhere else.
The stations best positioned for that scenario are the ones already building revenue diversity through digital audio, branded content, and non-gambling advertising categories that are growing alongside the sector’s record audience reach. Belgium’s ban was not the catastrophe the gambling industry predicted, but it was not painless for broadcasters either. The difference between the stations that navigated it well and those that struggled came down to one thing: whether they started preparing before the legislation arrived or after.
Belgium banned gambling ads on the radio three years ago. The gambling industry grew. The broadcasters adapted. The sky did not fall. If the UK follows and the direction of travel suggests it will, the same will be true here, but only for the stations that start preparing now.