Tottenham Hotspur: Kick gambling ads out of football!

My name is James and I'm in recovery from a twelve-year gambling addiction. This devastating period of my life took everything from me and started at 16 years old with a £5 bet on football.

In my teens, I was on the end of an extreme amount of gambling advertising and sponsorship through my love of football. Even the club I supported, Tottenham, had an online casino on the front of their shirt. I trusted football and because it kept telling me to gamble, I did. Once on the sites, the bookies cross-sold me their more profitable and addictive casino and slots products, which is where the addiction and harm really happened for me. Football's constant reminder to gamble made cutting down or stopping nearly impossible.

I love Spurs and they are a club that does so much good work in their community and bring a lot of joy (despite on-field performances...) to a lot of people, but promoting gambling to young fans in this country and around the world is jeapoardising this.

There are 409 deaths related to gambling every year in England alone and so many recovering addicts like me attempted or contemplated suicide.

A YouGov study from this year shows 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.

To prevent any young fan from experiencing what I and so many others did, I'm urging Spurs to cancel all gambling partnerships, say no to any new offers, and back The Big Step campaign.