GambleAware Reports Success for Public Health Campaign to Raise Awareness of Gambling Harm and Stigma

GambleAware has revealed the impact of its groundbreaking three-year marketing campaign to reduce gambling stigma and encourage people to seek support for gambling harms. The charity’s campaign drove significant behaviour change, with over 90% of the target audience reached taking action, including seeking advice and using digital tools for support.

Despite these achievements, GambleAware warns that urgent action is needed to curb gambling advertising, as operators spend up to £2 billion annually – far outweighing the amount spent on public health messaging. The charity is calling for more public health campaigns to reduce gambling harms in 2026 and stronger restrictions to ensure people are aware of the risks.

GambleAware’s campaign, “Let’s Open Up About Gambling”, was the first public health campaign of its kind designed to reduce the stigma people face, which can stop people asking for help when experiencing gambling harm.

The campaign ran across three phases between April 2023 and May 2025, and featured advertising, media campaigns and partnerships with other organisations, with creative assets co-created with individuals with lived experience of gambling harms. The campaign followed a strategy to use the real stories and feelings of real people to ensure its messages truly resonated, and aimed to raise awareness of gambling harm, stigma and the support available for anyone who may be struggling.

The campaign has been independently evaluated by Ipsos, who produced the new report. It found that the campaign led to change, including increasing people’s awareness and understanding of gambling harms. As well as the 90% of the target audience who saw the campaign and said they had taken action as a result, such as searching GambleAware online for more advice, two in five of the target audience also said they had a conversation about gambling as a result of the campaign. The campaign also increased uptake of support and digital tools on GambleAware’s website, such as its Service Finder tool and Self-Assessment tool.

The report also contains learnings and recommendations gained from the campaign, which are being shared by GambleAware to help inspire and inform future campaigns to reduce gambling harms. Recommendations include that future campaigns should be co-created with people who have lived experience, who can share their personal stories to build trust and connection and reduce stigma by showing how anyone can be affected.

GambleAware is calling for similar campaigns to reduce gambling harms to be run in 2026 – following the introduction of the new statutory gambling harms system – any future public health campaigns will be carried out by the new prevention commissioner. GambleAware is also calling for more restrictions on gambling advertising including for health warnings to be put on all gambling advertising and for them to signpost to where people can get help3.

Emma Munro-Faure, GambleAware Director of Marketing, said: “We’re proud that this campaign helped thousands of people to seek support for gambling harms. But stigma remains a major barrier, and with gambling companies spending £2 billion a year on advertising, we need stronger restrictions and clearer signposting to the free help and support available.”

Matt Gainsford from Lucky Generals, the lead creative agency that worked to produce the campaign, said: This was one of the most important briefs we’ve worked on. We’re incredibly proud of the impact the campaign has had, particularly when you look at it in the context of what the gambling industry spend on advertising. However, breaking down stigma is more than a three year job and we hope this is the beginning of a long-term, sustained effort to get millions more across Great Britain to open up about gambling.”

Maxine Ames, Strategic Planning Business Director at Manning Gottlieb, added: “Working on GambleAware’s ‘Let’s Open Up About Gambling’ campaign was one of the most fulfilling and impactful projects I’ve had the privilege of working on. The media strategy we developed was built around three carefully orchestrated phases – Educate, Reassure, and Enable – each designed to meet people where they are in their journey and guide them toward support. What made this campaign so special was how we used behavioural signals and contextual targeting to intercept people at moments of risk, while leveraging trusted environments to model help-seeking behaviour. Seeing our strategic approach achieve 98% reach across our target audience was incredibly rewarding but this wasn’t just about reach and frequency; it was about using our craft to genuinely help people and reduce stigma around gambling harms.

Tracy Madlin, who shared her lived experience of gambling harm as part of GambleAware’s campaign, supporting its installation featuring 85,000 poker chips at Westfield London, said: “Throughout my life I felt stigma on occasions, especially in my teens and later in life due to being female. Being part of the stigma campaign was amazing and I felt so very proud to be part of such an amazing campaign to help prevent gambling harm, the campaign I believe is saving lives and shows there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

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