An anti-gambling bonanza

I wrote in 2023 about the massive slush fund that would be created by the new gambling levy. The plan was to raise over £100 million a year by siphoning off one per cent of the gambling industry’s revenue and earmark twenty per cent of it for “research”. This was more money than academics who specialise in gambling could possibly spend because there were so few of them. Gambling research has traditionally been a niche area dominated by a relative handful of psychologists, but that soon changed when tens of millions of pounds were up for grabs. In the last three years, the market has suddenly been flooded with social scientists claiming to have insights into gambling. Once gambling was transformed into a “public health” issue, the door was open to thousands of postgraduates with random qualifications to hone their dubious craft.

The gambling levy came into effect last April and yielded £22.1 million for the research community in its first year to be funnelled through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The consequences have been much as I predicted. Last week saw the opening of the Gambling Harms Research  UK (GHR-UK) Evidence Centre, a £10 million hub run by Dr Heather Wardle who was one of the first academics to spot the opportunities of gambling becoming a “public health” issue. Wardle chaired the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling which compared gambling to asbestos and concluded that a lack of evidence was no excuse for not banning things. She does at least have many years of experience in gambling research and can reasonably claim to be an expert. The same cannot be said of some of the other recipients. 

Among the more familiar faces, it is no surprise to see the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group, now shrewdly renamed the Sheffield Addictions Research Group, getting their fingers in yet another pie. Less familiar faces include Loren Kock, an epidemiologist specialising in smoking and vaping who had never published anything about gambling until 2023, and Sarah Tipping, a sociologist with 20 years experience who also only started writing about gambling in 2023. Both are now “policy fellows”.

As its name suggests, the Gambling Harms Research UK Evidence Centre is only interested in gambling “harms”

Dozens of pieces of research have already been commissioned. Since many social scientists specialise in woke postmodern guff, that kind of thing is well represented. Projects include “Intersectionality in gambling related harm” (£48,670), “Menstrual change and gambling: a hybrid review” (£51,092) and “A rapid evidence review of gambling harms in ethnic and faith minority communities” (£50,420). A review into “gambling and its spatial footprint” (£51,088) is being led by an economist who only seems to have taken an interest in gambling in 2024 when he received funding to conduct a study which came to the earth-shattering conclusion that “people living in close proximity to gambling establishments are more likely to visit in person”. A study of the “aetiology and treatment of disordered gambling” (£164,481) is being led by a psychologist who has been publishing gambling research for years, which sounds promising until you see that the first line of his proposal says: “Gambling is acknowledged as a mental health disorder.” It is not, but such claims will serve him well in “public health” where the distinction between gambling and problem gambling is being deliberately erased. A study about gambling and suicide is being led by an academic who is an expert on suicide but has never published anything about gambling. Her proposal begins with the nonsensical claim that “almost half of adults have gambled within the past four weeks and around 40% within the last year” before claiming that the gambling industry in Britain is expanding (it is shrinking) and that rates of problem gambling have “escalated” (they have not).

As its name suggests, the Gambling Harms Research UK Evidence Centre is only interested in gambling “harms”. There is no sign that any of the £22 million will be spent researching the social, economic and health benefits of gambling. Wardle says that the new centre is “committed to involving people with lived and living experience of gambling”. But only if their experience has been negative, or can satisfied customers also get involved?

So committed is the Centre to focusing on those who have had a bad experience with gambling, it seems, that it has appointed Martin Jones, whose son committed suicide while being treated for pathological gambling in 2015, as its “lived experience lead”. And although Wardle promises to “collaborate  with  stakeholders”, that doesn’t include the main stakeholders — people who work for gambling companies — because she is equally committed to being “free from industry involvement”, even though they are the ones who are paying for it. 

The result is an enormous trough of cash for activists to dip their snouts into. The political agenda is barely concealed. The proposal for an evidence review about “gambling marketing harms” (£51,200) begins by asserting: “Gambling advertising is everywhere, from football shirts to social media feeds, and while regulations exist to protect the public from harm, gambling companies have become skilled at finding ways around them”. The authors promise that their work will have “direct practical applications” for “advocacy groups” and “international policymakers” because it will provide “critical lessons from countries that have implemented more comprehensive restrictions, helping Britain avoid repeating failed strategies”. In other words, more bans. The lead researcher is on the record saying that he wants the gambling industry to become a strictly regulated, state-owned monopoly.

The proposal for a review of the evidence on gambling and social media (£51,113) pre-empts its conclusion by asserting in the first sentence that the “convergence of social media platforms and online gambling presents a significant and escalating public health crisis”. This would be a spoiler if there were any doubt about the authors’ allegiances, but the conclusions of all the research projects can all be easily predicted in advance: there is no safe level of gambling, the gambling industry is evil, more taxes, more bans, and don’t worry about the black market. 

There is ample scope for serious research into gambling as a pastime and problem gambling as a psychological disorder, but don’t expect to see much of it from this organisation.