Bolton Wanderers to sever ties with gambling industry

League One football team Bolton Wanderers F. C. is to cut all ties with the betting and gambling industry, the club’s chair has announced.

The new development, announced on Thursday, means that fans will no longer be able to make bets at the club’s University of Bolton stadium. In addition, the club will not embark on any new sponsorship deals with companies in the gambling sector. To complement the changes, Bolton will aim to start supporting charities and organisations which offer support to gambling addicts.

Commenting on the news, club chair Sharon Brittan made it clear that the move was motivated by an effort to tackle problem gambling among football fans, saying that “Problem gambling ruins lives and we’ve taken this stance to show our support for those who are suffering from a betting addiction.

“Latest research shows that there are between 340,000 and 1.4 million adult gambling addicts in the UK and over 60,000 young people aged between 11 and 16 are addicted.”

One gambling-related partnership that the club will not be able to disassociate itself from, however, is the football league system itself, since League One, the division to which Bolton belongs, is currently named the Sky Bet League One for sponsorship reasons.

Neil Hart, the club’s chief executive, acknowledged this: “We recognise that some people do want to bet and also that the league has a commercial partnership with a gambling company in place — and we are respectful of this.

“However, we will not take part in any activity to promote gambling outside the existing EFL contractual requirements.

“This means that we will not provide match-day betting kiosks or enter into any new agreements with gambling companies.”

Bolton’s move is not without precedent. Last year, League Two club Forest Green Rovers endorsed the Big Step campaign, which seeks to completely ban gambling advertising from football.

In the time since the government announced its review of the Gambling Act 2005, it has been speculated that front-of-shirt gambling advertisements might soon become a thing of the past. The introduction of such a change, however, would almost definitely generate controversy. After the severe economic consequences of the pandemic for English football, many might argue, the sport needs all the revenue it can get.

They might well point to Italy as an example of the dangers of introducing a sweeping ban of the type The Big Step is pushing for. In a country where gambling advertising in sport has been prohibited since 2019, the economic impact of the pandemic on football has been devastating. Last month, the Italian football governing body appealed to the national government to temporarily lift the ban in light of the severe economic disruption brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The actions taken by Bolton Wanderers, though, seem to be a case of a club leadership showing genuine concern for the wellbeing of its fanbase.