Headingley AFC Leeds: Football club to wear yellow laces in anti-gambling adverts after death of player

Headingley AFC will join clubs from across England, Scotland and Wales to take part in the campaign, which will be visible across seven different competitions, at a time when the UK’s gambling laws are under review. The initiative, which falls on Addiction Awareness Week, has been organised by The Big Step, a campaign to end all gambling advertising in sponsorship in football.

The campaign has a personal meaning for Headingley AFC who are campaigning in the name of their former team mate and manager Lewis Keogh, who died in 2013, after he kept his gambling habit a secret from everyone who knew him, until he suddenly and shockingly took his own life at the age of 34.

Club Chairman, Callum Butcher, told the YEP: “As a club we know first-hand how destructive gambling addiction can be. It’s always been close to our hearts and we try to do whatever we can to raise awareness. We were the first club to have a shirt sponsor warning of the dangers of gambling.

"We want to spread a positive message and educate young people across West Yorkshire on the dangers. When you see the numbers of young people ages to 16-24 with a gambling addiction and you see how much advertising is around the game. It’s almost normalised as something you just associate with football.”

Recent research revealed that more than 700 gambling adverts can appear during a single televised Premier League match, with a gambling advert visible up to 89 per cent of the time on Match of the Day. Gambling adverts also appear in children’s sticker books, junior sections of matchday programmes and video games age-rated 3+.

Headingley AFC were rocked by the death of Lewis in 2013 with Callum admitting that nobody knew what he was going through behind the scenes. Heartbreakingly, his suicide note included the words ‘addiction is cruel’. An inquest at the time returned a verdict of death as a result of a gambling addiction.

"Thinking back to the time we were all very close to Lewis but for whatever reason we didn’t see the signs that anything was wrong. We want to encourage people to talk or seek help if that’s what they need,” Callum said.

"For us it’s about raising awareness and if even one person asks about the sponsor then it sparks that conversation and that’s what is most important to us. If we can help even one person get the help they need then that’s what we are trying to do.”

Clubs from across the footballing pyramid will be taking part in the campaign with the League One side Forest Green due to be part of the protest during their FA Cup first-round tie at South Shields, a match being shown live on the BBC.

James Grimes, formerly addicted to gambling and founder of The Big Step campaign, said:

“Gambling is often a hidden addiction, and we wear bright yellow to highlight there is no shame and to remember all of the bright lives taken by gambling. Football is worshipped by millions and cannot be used as a platform to advertise addictive gambling products."