The House of Lords Liaison Committee published Gambling Harm – Time for Action: Follow-up report on 17 September, and its framing matters as much as its recommendations. The committee presents its work explicitly as a reversal of the Gambling Act 2005, taking as its underlying principle that gambling should be tolerated rather than promoted.
For commercial radio, that reopens a settlement the sector has operated under for nearly two decades. How that settlement was actually constructed, and in particular where broadcast sits inside it, determines how much of it is exposed.
What the 2005 Act replaced
Before the Act, the regime rested on the principle of unstimulated demand. Only bingo, football pools, the National Lottery and social lotteries could advertise on television and radio.
The 2005 Act replaced that approach with one of aiming to permit, built on three licensing objectives: preventing gambling from being a source of crime or disorder, ensuring it is conducted in a fair and open way, and protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited. The intention was that a licensed industry could operate and market itself much as any other leisure sector does.
The Commons Library sets out the result plainly: “From September 2007, when the act came into force, gambling operators have been able to advertise across all media in Great Britain.”
The carve-out nobody mentions
Less widely understood is that the Act did not then go on to regulate broadcast advertising itself.
Section 328 gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations controlling the form, content, timing and location of gambling advertisements, with penalties running to 51 weeks of imprisonment or a level 5 fine. Section 329 removes television and radio from that power. Regulations made under Section 328 cannot cover broadcast services regulated under the Communications Act 2003, and the Act provides instead that “The Office of Communications shall under that section set, review and revise standards in respect of advertisements for gambling”, in consultation with the Gambling Commission. The BBC and similarly licensed services are excluded as well.
This is why a station’s obligations on gambling advertising are found in the BCAP Code, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority, rather than in gambling legislation. Radio has never operated under the Gambling Act’s advertising regime. It operates under the Communications Act, and that distinction is about to matter.
What liberalisation produced
The scale of what followed is easier to measure on television than on radio. Gambling advertising there rose from roughly 234,000 spots a year to about 1.3 million within some five years of the rules changing, a little over fivefold.
Radio has no equivalent count. It was not separately measured then and it is not separately measured now, which is consistent with its absence from the channel breakdowns the sector publishes today. Any assessment of what the category is worth to commercial radio still rests on estimates rather than published figures.
Why 2023 settled nothing
The April 2023 white paper, High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, was widely expected to address advertising. It did not.
It proposed no new advertising restrictions, relying instead on existing measures and voluntary action: the industry commitment that 20% of advertising carry safer gambling messaging, opt-out options from operators, and the Premier League’s removal of gambling sponsors from shirt fronts. It promised reviews of incentives such as free bets and bonuses, work on safer gambling messaging with health departments, strengthened consent for direct marketing, and joint Gambling Commission and ASA work on content marketing appealing to children.
Gerald Gouriet KC’s assessment of the marketing and advertising chapter was that it contained “no firm proposals at all”. That vacuum is a large part of why the question has returned through a parliamentary committee rather than a department.
The two reversals
The committee now recommends a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship. It reaches broadcast, online and social media advertising, sports sponsorship, direct and affiliate marketing, content marketing, influencer promotion and inducements. On-course advertising at horse racing and greyhound racing would be exempt, lottery advertising assessed for risk before any inclusion, and a transition period would carry what the committee calls sensible exemptions.
The second recommendation has drawn less attention and may matter more to broadcasters. The committee wants advertising regulation moved from the ASA to the Gambling Commission under statutory authority.
For radio, that would end the Section 329 separation. Broadcast advertising standards for one category would sit with a gambling regulator rather than with Ofcom and the broadcast codes, a structural change that would outlast whatever happens to the prohibition itself.
What the committee concedes
The report does not present its plan as costless. It states that the approach would shrink rather than grow the gambling sector, and accepts a negative net economic impact on operators, affiliates, media businesses and sport. Media businesses include commercial radio.
The inclusion of affiliates is worth noting on its own terms. Where a narrower restriction might push spend towards whichever channels were left open, the ban as drafted reaches direct and affiliate marketing explicitly, so comparison and guide services – Sisterbets and similar operations among them sit inside the proposed scope rather than outside it as an alternative route. The displacement argument that usually accompanies advertising restrictions is harder to run against this proposal than against most.
The industry’s objection is on the record regardless. Betting and Gaming Council chief executive Grainne Hurst called the report “deeply misguided”, warning that a blanket ban “would remove a key competitive advantage of being licensed and regulated while doing nothing to stop illegal operators”. Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners said it “cites often conflicting evidence” and showed a “lack of curiosity” about unintended consequences.
What happens next
The government is not obliged to act on a committee’s recommendations. It has committed to a formal response, and none has yet been published.
For commercial radio, the thing to track is not only whether a prohibition proceeds. It is whether the jurisdictional recommendation survives that response, because that one changes who writes radio’s advertising rules however far any ban ends up travelling.