Hoernle and Carran on Gambling Advertising and Protection of the Vulnerable in the UK

Julia Hoernle, Queen Mary University, London, School of Law, and Margaret Carran, City Law School, City University, London, have published A Sieve that Does Hold a Little Water – Gambling Advertising and Protection of the Vulnerable in the UK. Here is the abstract.

This article reviews the regulation of gambling advertising and argues that the restrictions imposed by the largely self-regulatory system only have limited effect. We compare the regulation of gambling advertising, by way of analogy, to a sieve that does hold only a little water. The article analyses the law against the third statutory objective considering the existing research literature on the impact of advertising on problem gambling. The article points to gaps in the protection of children and vulnerable persons and argues that the law should focus more on them. It concludes that currently the law focuses too much on the communicative intent of the advertiser and not sufficiently on the impact of advertising on the vulnerable and the lack of regulation of the online space. It makes recommendations as to how the law in the UK should change.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.