Liverpool FC: Kick gambling ads out of football!!

My son Ryan was 27 when he took his own life after becoming addicted to gambling. He loved Liverpool FC, but his club and the game he worshipped let him down by constantly telling him to do the thing that would lead to his death. Weeks before Ryan died, he told a fellow gambler that he found stopping so difficult because of the advertising.

With 409 deaths related to gambling every year in England alone, football must stop promoting dangerous and addictive products to millions each week – a recent study found that up to 700 gambling adverts can appear during a single televised Premier League match.

A YouGov study from this year showing that 2.9 million people are either already addicted or at risk of being so, with a further 3.3 million classified as “affected others”. These stark figures show what we already know: gambling harm is not an issue affecting just a small minority, it is severely harming – sometimes killing – many.

I want the club my son loved, Liverpool FC, to cancel all existing partnerships with gambling companies, to reject future partnerships, and to back The Big Step campaign to end all gambling advertising in football so no family has to go through what mine has.