I have mentioned several times at my shock of seeing the rise of gambling sponsorship in football which has reached close to the boiling point and it seems like someone has finally got the message. Will the F.A. finally rid us of this potential conflict scenario or will they waffle around and let the commitment fade and die? Integrity needs to be brought back to the administration along with some other possible changes that might give the working people a chance of redemption in the world of wealth and greed. Perhaps it's just part of an ever changing world passing me by, but then again I always will be a believer that thing were always better the way they were.
I think you're in danger of rose-tinted glorifying of the past, and I personally am not usually an advocate of what could be considered 'overly sensitive, nanny state regulation', but I do agree that gambling companies acting as sponsors to football clubs is a bit perverse. For all the changes that have happened to the game over the years (mostly notably, the ever increasing money involved), I do think that the shift to a more family-friendly accessibility is a positive thing, and with that comes a required consideration for the influence football, and all associated with it, has on children. They already did away with alcoholic drinks manufacturers being sponsors, and I think it’s equally disturbing seeing young kids in kits, sporting ads for betting sites. It could get prickly deciding where to draw the line of decency, but I don’t think there’s a problem with that being an ongoing discussion. In the case of gambling sponsorship I think there’s an extremely strong case for banning it, with the rise of the smart-phone offering easy and instant ways for punters to blow their money. Though we live in a society where adults should be allowed to make their own choices and most can be responsible with it, I’m sure that those suffering with gambling addiction would have taken a sharp increase in recent times and exposing impressionable kids to it by having it associated with a great love of theirs would only likely exacerbate the problem. …Besides which, hopefully we can do away with those irritating ads with Ray Winstone and his fake, OTT cockney accent!
