I was pleased to take part in The Big Step this weekend, joining over 200 people harmed by online gambling and campaigners to walk over a cumulative 1,137 miles – the total distance between every Premier League, Championship and Scottish Premiership football club with a gambling company as an official sponsor or partner – to call for action on gambling’s destructive relationship with the sport. 

I contributed 28,603 steps (roughly 12 miles) to the total, and I was pleased to meet with Gambling with Lives co-founder Charles Ritchie outside Bramall Lane and highlight the urgent need to address the gambling industry’s relationship with football on BBC Look North (see here), making the case to end all advertising and sponsorship of the game.  

The campaign was founded by people with personal experience of gambling related-harm and it aims to tackle the escalating infiltration of gambling advertising in football. Logos plastered across every fixture and ground are ruining the game for so many struggling with gambling addiction and are drawing in many more – especially young people, with 55,000 children now addicted.