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Gambling Occupied 32.4% of Premier League Highlights Screen Time, Study Finds

By jili tutorial · August 31, 2026

Gambling Occupied 32.4% of Premier League Highlights Screen Time, Study Finds

Gambling branding appeared on screen for nearly a third of all footage in Premier League YouTube highlights last season, according to new research from the University of Nottingham. The study found that gambling branding accounted for 32.4% of screen time in Sky Sports’ highlights packages for the final 10 games of the 2025/26 Premier League season. By contrast, gambling made up just 1.5% of screen time in official FIFA highlights from the 2026 World Cup.

The pre-print, posted on 19 August 2026, is described by the university as the first study to measure unhealthy commodity branding in football YouTube highlights.

Key Findings at a Glance

The paper is a pre-print and has not yet been peer-reviewed. It is based on a purposive sample of 27 highlights packages.

Where the Branding Actually Sat

The footage was recorded before gambling brands came off the front of matchday shirts. The first season under that voluntary agreement began on 21 August.

In the Premier League packages, front-of-shirt placement accounted for 27.1% of gambling appearances. Pitchside boards and LED screens were the most common placement, carrying 50.4% of gambling exposures. Stadium signage accounted for 10.1%, and sleeve sponsorships made up 5.4%, with the remainder spread across fan and staff placements.

How the Study Was Coded

The research authors, Nathan Davies, Sarah Busby, and Joanne Morling, coded 10 Sky Sports Premier League highlights and 17 official FIFA World Cup highlights. Any brand appearance lasting two seconds or longer was logged, along with its commodity category, placement, and the match moment in which it appeared. Kit manufacturer logos were excluded.

The researchers also coded the YouTube adverts served before each highlights package. Data collection ran from 4 June to 27 July 2026. Five packages were double-coded, returning a Cohen’s kappa of 0.85, which indicates strong inter-coder reliability.

Brand density was similar across both competitions, at around 13 references per broadcast minute. The difference was in which brands appeared.

Premier League vs World Cup: Key Numbers

MeasurePremier LeagueWorld Cup
Highlights packages coded1017
Package length190 seconds (mean)130 seconds, except the final at 117 seconds
Mean views per package450,0004.7 million
Unhealthy commodity branding, share of screen time38.0%18.7%
Gambling branding, share of screen time32.4%1.5%
HFSS food, share of screen time2.5%13%
Alcohol, share of screen time1.7%4%
Trading, crypto, and prediction markets4.4%3.7%
Gambling pre-roll adverts10 of 12 adverts, 123 of 153 secondsNone

Source: Davies, Busby, and Morling, medRxiv pre-print, 19 August 2026.

Pre-Roll Advertising: One Side Only

Gambling brands supplied 10 of the 12 pre-roll adverts served ahead of Premier League highlights, accounting for 123 of 153 seconds of advertising. No gambling adverts preceded World Cup highlights.

In practical terms, viewers were served up to 30 seconds of gambling advertising before packages that averaged 190 seconds of match footage. Audience size ran in the opposite direction: World Cup highlights averaged 4.7 million views per package, roughly ten times the 450,000 average for Premier League packages.

Nathan Davies, from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham and lead author of the study, said: “As the new season kicks off, the scale of potential exposure is substantial. Gambling adverts ran before most highlights. Gambling branding was on screen for a third of the highlights we analysed, and only around a quarter of those appearances were on the front of shirts, the one placement the Premier League’s voluntary agreement addresses. That leaves the great majority of gambling exposure in football coverage untouched.”

Why the Shirt Agreement Leaves Most Exposure Untouched

Premier League clubs agreed in April 2023 to withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts, following consultation with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The change took effect after the 2025/26 season and applies to shirt fronts only. Sleeves, training kit, LED hoardings, and official partner designations all remain available.

Operators have already moved into other advertising options. Betway became Manchester United’s official principal partner, and BoyleSports secured LED signage at Nottingham Forest. The Premier League, EFL, The FA, and the Women’s Super League separately adopted a Code of Conduct for Gambling Related Agreements in Football from the start of the 2024/25 season.

The placement an operator buys, therefore, determines how much exposure it gets, and that is what makes the valuation of different sponsorship assets harder to pin down. The authors write: “Measures confined to a single placement are unlikely to produce meaningful reductions in gambling advertising exposure.”

The authors also make a related point about FIFA. It required venues to obscure brands that are not tournament partners, which held World Cup exposure lower and spread it across more categories. But the alcohol, HFSS food, sugary drink, trading, cryptocurrency, and prediction market sponsors that did appear were there by FIFA’s choice.

A body able to remove non-partner branding entirely, the authors argue, can equally decide which categories appear at all: FIFA in the World Cup’s case, and the UK government in the Premier League’s.