UK gambling operators have spent a record amount of money on television adverts in 2015. These are the results of data gathered by researchers at Nielsen. The investigation was carried out for The Guardian newspaper and shows a significant increase in spending by UK gambling operators on television adverts.
UK gambling firms spend big
The study conducted by Nielsen looked at how much money UK gambling firms were spending on television marketing back in 2012 and how it compared to 2015/2016. The results showed that UK gambling operators were spending significantly more money on having their TV adverts aired.
Back in 2012, UK gambling companies spent £82.1 million on airing their TV adverts. This is already a significant amount of money but in 2015, that amount increased to £118.5 million. The study went even further and looked into which UK gambling operators had increased their spending the most.
The highest spender was Bingo operators, as Bingo operators are the only ones allowed to advertise on television before 9pm at night. These firms spent £56.9 million, which was an increase of 17% compared to 2014. As for online casinos, they had the biggest increase in spending compared to the previous year. Online casinos spent 54% more on advertising in 2015 compared to 2014, spending a total of £30.1 million. Sports betting firms were ranked in third place, spending £26.7 million.
Looking forward to the rest of 2016, we could see another record breaking year. During the first six months of the year, UK gambling companies spend £51.4 million, meaning that if this trend continues, we could see over £120 million spent by the end of the year.
UK gambling operators spend more each year
UK gambling operators have been spending ever increasing amounts of money on television adverts in recent years. The study by Nielsen concluded that since 2012, £456 million had been spent on TV adverts and this didn’t include the £169 million spend during this period by the lottery firms.
These increases in spending were made possible back in 2007 when the government relaxed restrictions on advertising gambling. Before this relaxation, only Bingo, the National Lottery and football pools could run adverts. The relaxation has led to a six-fold increase in the number of gambling adverts airing on television. Interestingly enough, the amount of complaints received by the Advertising Standards Authority has gone down from 1152 in 2012 to 956 in 2015.
