Regulatory Whack-a-mole: A Rapid Scoping Review of Gambling Marketing Restrictions and their (in)Effectiveness

Gambling marketing increases participation, spending, and harm. Marketing restrictions represent the best regulatory response. Decades of tobacco and alcohol marketing regulation demonstrate a recurring pattern in which each restriction triggers industry adaptation through, e.g., channel substitution, alibi marketing, and the exploitation of regulatory gaps. However, no review has systematically assessed gambling operator adaptations to marketing restrictions. This review examines the effectiveness of gambling marketing restrictions implemented globally between 2010 and 2026, in light of these potential adaptations.

Fifty records spanning 13 jurisdictions were synthesised across six gambling marketing restriction categories. (1) Content, (2) Timing, and (3) Channel Restrictions were consistently undermined by poor operator compliance, redistribution of advertising to less regulated platforms, and narrow regulatory scopes leaving the majority of marketing exposure unregulated. (4) Inducement Restrictions yielded the strongest behavioural evidence, with sustained reductions in customer acquisition and money gambled, though operators restrategised by redirecting promotional effort towards retaining existing customers. (5) Platform-enforced measures curtailed on-platform content but not external gambling website traffic or underage exposure. (6) Comprehensive Bans were circumvented through alibi marketing, transitional exemptions, and reallocation of spend to unregulated, operator-owned media channels.

Regulatory displacement was evident across all six categories. Operators consistently migrated marketing activity to less regulated channels, formats, and strategies following each restriction, mirroring the established regulatory trajectories of tobacco and alcohol marketing. Effective gambling marketing regulation requires statutory, comprehensive, and future-proof frameworks rather than the voluntary, circumventable, and reactive approaches evaluated in this review.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-026-00793-5.