Dr Steve Sharman
I completed my undergraduate degree in Psychology at UEL, graduating top of the class and winning the British Psychological Society award for the University. During this time I became interested in pathological gambling, and began working on a voluntary basis at the National Problem Gambling Clinic. This was followed by a master’s degree at UCL in Cognitive Neuroscience, where my dissertation investigated decision-making differences between gamblers and a control group. I won a scholarship to complete my PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Dr Luke Clark, investigating cognition and decision-making in pathological and regular gamblers. Upon completion of my doctorate, I worked for approximately 1 year at NatCen (National Centre for Social Research) before moving to the University of Lincoln to take up a post-doctoral research post, working closely with pathological gamblers from the Gordon Moody Association. I am a member of the National Problem Gambling Research Council, housed at the clinic in London, have acted as a reviewer for numerous journals, supervise final year undergraduate dissertation, and teach on the Psychology undergraduate degree.
Gambling exposure in football: An analysis of Premier League and Championship matchday programmes
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The relationship between football and gambling is ever increasing with some competitions and many Premier League and Championship teams sponsored by gambling companies. This research sought to quantify gambling exposure in the Matchday programme both through direct advertising, and incidental exposure for all Premier League and Championship clubs. Frequency of direct adverts and incidental exposure was compared to equivalent alcohol and smoking marketing exposure. Matchday programmes were obtained for one home game for each team in the top two English divisions over consecutive weekends in October 2018, where over 1.2 million people attended matches. Results indicate that exposure to gambling through both direct adverts and incidental exposure is significantly greater than either alcohol or tobacco. In some instances, exposure to gambling was apparent on over 40% of programme pages. The programmes of teams sponsored by a gambling company had a higher proportion of pages with gambling exposure than those sponsored by a non-gambling sponsor. Most strikingly, many clubs had dedicated child sections of the programme which still exposed children to gambling marketing. Repeated exposure to an adult product to children is a significant problem for legislative authorities.
This work was funded by an internal University of East London Research Fund.