THE volume of gambling related content in professional football has led to a stark warning from Bournemouth University academics.

Researchers from the university have said massive media coverage and ‘intensive advertising’ during the World Cup may be pushing problem gamblers towards making ‘harmful decisions’.

The report by Dr Raian Ali, Dr Emily Arden-Close, Dr John McAlaney and Keith Phalp reveals the amount of money spent on gambling during the World Cup in the UK is expected to more than double from £1 billion in 2014 to £2.5 billion this year.

Over the years gambling has grown to become synonymous with professional football.

AFC Bournemouth's main shirt sponsor is online gambling company Mansion, while Stoke City's stadium is now called the bet365, after the club sold the naming rights to the bookmaker.

Elite clubs have official betting partners, with promotions in match programmes and betting stands inside stadiums.

Media coverage, both print and broadcast, is packed with betting advertisements, including in-game betting odds boosts and limited-time offers.

The report published by Bournemouth University lays bare the enormous scale of global sports betting which it says is worth up to £625 billion a year, with 70 per cent of that trade believed to come from football.

“During big sporting competitions, such as the World Cup, even more money is spent gambling than usual,” it said. “Over the 2018 World Cup, bookmakers are estimated to make a profit of £41.3 billion.”

The report states that: “For many people, gambling isn’t just a fun novelty every four years,” and claims that in the UK alone, around 430,000 citizens could be identified as ‘problem gamblers’. “These individuals have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds online, which has impacted not only the gamblers but also their families,” it said.

The researchers claimed that sports gambling is being driven by the ‘unlimited availability of online betting’ and said that the fact that ‘no physical money is exchanged’, made financial transactions seem ‘less real’.

They also concluded that the ‘vast amount of data that online gambling sites collect also enables them to personalise offers to individual gamblers’.

“Instead, this data should be used to help people gamble responsibly by warning users in real-time that they are exhibiting problematic gambling behaviours,” said the researchers.

“There is only a fine line between the legitimate marketing and personalisation of content and offers on the one hand and exploitation and manipulation on the other. For example, the tracking of a gambler’s betting pattern means the gambler can be targeted with offers following heavy losses, encouraging them to chase losses even further.”