Just hours after the federal government lifted its ban on single-game sports betting in Canada in 2021, ads for sports betting started springing up everywhere — causing many experts to sound the alarm bell about the potential harms.
Some of these experts had the opportunity to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for sports betting with the broader public recently, as part of the Science Café series organized by the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE).
“The KPE Science Cafés are interactive discussion sessions that allow members of the KPE community and broader public to gain new insights into the research expertise and perspectives of our faculty and U of T more broadly,” said Timothy Welsh, a professor and associate dean of research at KPE. “Through them, we hope to ignite new discussions, opportunities and directions for research and further knowledge exchange.”
Independent senator for Ontario Marty Deacon was joined by KPE Professor Emeritus Bruce Kidd, the co-founder of the Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling, Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology from U of T Scarborough, and Darrell Adams, the head coach of the Varsity Blues football team at U of T.
Moderated by KPE Professor Emeritus Peter Donnelly, himself a member of the campaign to ban gambling ads along with Professor Gretchen Kerr, dean of KPE, the panelists discussed everything from how sports betting undermines the integrity of sports to proposed legislation to help regulate it.
“There is growing Canadian data on the impact of sports betting on our population,” said Deacon, who in 2023 introduced Bill S-269 in the senate.
The bill, if passed, would provide for the development of a national framework to regulate advertising for sports betting in Canada and set national standards for prevention of risk for persons negatively impacted by sports betting.
“The new election will be a great opportunity to put pressure on every major party to make reigning in these ads a part of their platform," said Deacon, "and I’ll be there with my legislation.”
Kidd added: “If we can regulate ads for tobacco, cannabis and alcohol for health reasons, why can’t we have the same kind of regulations for something that we know is contributing to another kind of health hazard – gambling addiction?”
Kidd’s advocacy group is also lobbying the provincial government to stop the spread and prohibit the acceptance of bets on Olympic, Paralympic, school, university, college and amateur sports – and that’s not all.
“We want to raise taxes on gambling transactions in Ontario, which are among the lowest in North America at 20 per cent,” he said. “For comparison, in the state of New York, sport betting is taxed at 51 per cent and proceeds go into treatment, research, education and provision of sport opportunities at the grassroots level.”
Coach Adams said the widespread use of cell phones has made sports gambling all too easy for youth.
“We have to find a way to provide alternatives to being online all the time,” he said. “Sport is the ideal alternative to that, but it’s become inundated with ads for gambling.”
It doesn’t help that it’s being endorsed by celebrities, including athletes, added Joordens.
“The ads all show them having fun, but they’re not showing the dark side of it,” he said. “What if every time you open the app to place a bet, it showed you how many times you lost?"
Kidd suggested disrupting the message.
“In the early days of the anti-tobacco campaigns, activists persuaded governments to require of media and schools to show ads demonstrating the harms of smoking,” he said.
Adams proposed being more aggressive with anti-gambling ads, recalling the effect that graphic anti-drug commercials had on him.
“We shouldn’t dance around the issue, we need to show the real impact of this addiction,” he said.
Importantly, said Joordens, we need to shake off the attitude that there’s nothing we can do about it.
“Get active, be vocal, use your influence to delegitimize the culture of betting, push our elected reps at every level to ban or regulate ads that accentuate participation, use your influence with school boards, municipalities and community associations to get them to provide better opportunities for kids to engage in sports,” said Kidd.
Involve the parents, develop teaching modules to discuss the risk of gambling, add gambling ads to the list of risks to safe sport, were some of the other suggestions made by the panelists.
“Gambling poisons sport,” said Kidd. “If you’re only engaging in it on your phone to place small bets, all the joy of physical effort, of communal participation in sport with others, is lost.
“We need to stop gambling ads and start regulating sports betting in order to increase participation in healthy, embodied physical activity.”