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Hammers urged to walk towards change

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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.

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I am Season Ticket Holder in West stand lower at the London Stadium and before that, I used to stand in the Sir Trevor Brooking Lower Row R seat 159 in the Boleyn Ground and in the Eighties I stood on the terraces of the old South Bank. I am a presenter on the West Ham Podcast called MooreThanJustaPodcast.co.uk. A Blogger on WestHamTillIdie.com a member of the West Ham Supporters Advisory Board (SAB), Founder of a Youtube channel called Mr West Ham Football at http://www.youtube.com/MrWestHamFootball,

I am also the associate editor here at Claret and Hugh.

Life Long singer of bubbles! Come on you Irons!

Follow me at @Westhamfootball on twitter