In Defence: Ivan Toney

There's a gambling company on his kit.

The transition from dial-up to Wi-Fi made the Internet a place capable of streaming live events. This advancement meant illegal streaming became my primary means of attaining football. An addict will find a way.

Streaming was my first exposure to British commercials. The streams were primarily from Sky Sports, and I instantly observed the bombardment of gambling advertisements. Actor Ray Winstone would appear with his gravelly voice telling everyone where to bet. As smartphones became more powerful, the ads suggested downloading applications to receive the latest odds.

It was jarring from the outside. Gambling adverts weren’t usual in the United States until the Supreme Court ruled it a states’ rights issue in 2018. Native American casinos, lotteries, and the Kentucky Derby (i.e. horse racing) were observable, but the volume felt much more intense in the United Kingdom; the industry felt culturally engrained. I assumed it akin to what is stereotypical in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

I often wondered whether I would bet on football were I living the United Kingdom. My upbringing wouldn’t sanction it, but its nature seemed so predacious I can’t imagine living in the country, enjoying football, and being impervious to the conditioning. Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan told an audience in 1966:

Someone said once: “We don’t know who discovered water, but we are pretty sure it wasn’t a fish!” We are all in this position, being surrounded by some environment or element that blinds us totally.

Living in a culture that views gambling as commonplace would be like a fish in water; one may never perceive something enveloping them unless snatched by an eagle’s talons or captured by a fisherman’s net.

In addition to British television, something that always captured me was the branding on football shirts. Professional American and Canadian sports franchises only recently started placing corporate logos on their uniforms. It appears they took the idea from Europe, where the practice has happened since the 1970s.

When I started supporting Chelsea in 2001, an American or Canadian child could be forgiven if they thought the team’s name was “Fly Emirates.” The front of the jersey is supreme in Anglophone and Francophone North America. The cliché says: “You play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back.” In football you play for the badge, it’s on the front, and maybe there’s a name on it, but what everyone sees is the sponsor.

When looking at Premier League kits this season, you won’t be shocked to find McLuhan’s fish swimming safely.

Ten of the league’s 20 clubs have visible partnerships with gambling companies on their kits: Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brentford, Everton, Fulham, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton, West Ham, and Wolves. Eight others have general partnerships with gambling companies: Arsenal, Brighton, Chelsea, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Tottenham. Nottingham Forest had a deal with Football Index, but the betting firm entered administration and the newly-promoted side were left without a shirt sponsor until the United Nations arrived in January.

The only club truly unattached are Crystal Palace. Last year their kit sponsor was a gambling firm; this season they have partnerships with BeGambleAware.org and GamStop. Maybe the south London club saw the light on Damascus Road and found salvation, or perhaps it’s more about legislation brewing in Parliament.

I didn’t realise until speaking with friends from the United Kingdom that the endemic culture I observed during the early years of streaming—though feeling engrained—was relatively new.

Its cause was policies enacted during Tony Blair’s government, most notably the 2005 Gambling Act which relaxed restrictions in Britain. It opened the media floodgates (similar to the 2018 United States Supreme Court decision), allowing space for what existed culturally to grow without heavy doses of government interference. Thinking of McLuhan’s fish, this is where the water came from.

The 2005 Act was an incredible commercial success. According to the UK’s Gambling Commission, the gambling industry generated over £14 billion between April 2021 and March 2022, and 44 percent of Britain’s adult population placed a bet “on any activity in the last four weeks.” The annual revenue generated for the industry and British government through taxation is remarkable, but what of the human cost?

For years those specialising in addiction have advocated the government overhaul its current legislation. A barrage of targeted adverts creates a context bound to ruin some percentage unable to cope. Unfortunately, horror stories of people losing everything from possessions to their lives because of addiction are not uncommon.

A long-awaited white paper proposing changes to the 2005 Act should drop sometime this year. The largest change to football—at least visually—would be clubs with gambling sponsorships agreeing to remove them from their shirts. Crystal Palace anticipated where football is heading and got a head start.

Named in Gareth Southgate’s most recent selection for the England national team, Ivan Toney is developing into one of the Premier League’s best strikers; but hundreds of gambling charges last November have soured his emergence.

The Football Association charged Toney with 232 breaches of betting rules, and in December, another 30 were added. In March, the Brentford forward plead guilty to many of the charges but maintained innocence on others. The hearing to determine the length of his suspension will be in April and is expected to be around six months.

Details of the breaches aren’t public—other than they happened between February 2017 and January 2021—but the rules on gambling state all players, coaches, staff members, and board members are prohibited from betting on the sport in any capacity. That includes wagers on games or transfers and forbids sharing inside information.

The obvious contradiction is Brentford are sponsored by an online betting company based in South Africa. Every time Toney is visible in his Brentford colours the image passively promotes, endorses, and perpetuates what got him in trouble. It would be funny were it not so hypocritical. The 27-year-old is a human billboard for the industry he will be suspended for engaging.

It could be said most adults have a healthy relationship with gambling. Most don’t gamble, and those who partake only do so to a certain extent. That number represents the vast majority, but “the vast majority” is not representative of the whole. Others are predisposed to having unhealthy relationships with gambling, and in those instances the inundation becomes cruel. Propaganda is an indiscriminate beast that equally applies pressure to all, but all are not equally equipped to deal with the pressure.

Societal conditioning applies to footballers. They live in the same water. Despite being proscribed from gambling, if one is cultivated in an environment incessantly promoting particular behaviours, a certain percentage of any group will respond adversely to what is advertised. Toney was born in 1996, making him eight or nine when the Blair government opened a sea of adverts from the gambling industry to flood television and radio. Without knowing him, the centre-forward may be inclined to excess, but the fault would not be his exclusively; it belongs principally with those who engineered the context.

Within the United Kingdom’s government is an admission they were too lax about gambling in 2005. It isn’t often the would-be liberal party loosens restrictions and the would-be conservative party is amenable to tightening them, but times are strange, and the white paper is coming.

I can’t easily condemning those unable to resist systems that spend billions of pounds to elicit specific behaviours. What others can withstand doesn’t change propaganda's effect on the vulnerable. The marketing is specifically designed to lure those confident in their football knowledge; an aspiring and eventual footballer raised anywhere in England would certainly fit that bill. Toney is one of many who’ve become trapped. I only want acknowledgment the trap exists and isn’t of his own making. If not to save Toney, then for future versions of him British society is likely to produce. 🎯