The Big Step is organising a two hour and forty-minute walk from the London Stadium to Champion Hill to raise awareness against gambling addictions.
The organisation was started by people with lived experience of gambling harm, including Gambling with Lives, a charity set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide. Tragically, there are between 250 and 650 gambling-related suicides in the UK each year.
They are campaigning for a ban on gambling advertising and sponsorship in football. All too often, football is the ‘hook’ that draws first-time gamblers in, who then go on to get cross-sold highly dangerous – and addictive – products.
This Saturday, October 9th, Dulwich Hamlet are playing Billericay Town at Champion Hill in Southeast London (kick-off is at 3pm). Both clubs support the campaign to kick gambling adverts out of football, and have set a positive example to other clubs around the country.
Big Step wants West Ham fans and other football fans to join them in the walk to campaign for gambling advert-free football in the Premier League.
More information can be found at https://the-bigstep.com/events
If you can’t make the walk you can sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/end-gambling-advertising-and-sponsorship-in-football
Of the 44 teams in the Premier League and Championship, 27 feature a betting company on their shirts.