Beloved Aston Villa Come Under Fire

The Prince of Wales has hit the headlines this week for comments he ha mad relating to gambling in football. Yorkshire campaigners Liz and Charles Ritchie (husband and wife), both received MBE’s from Prince William at Windsor Castle on Wednesday 28^th June for setting up the charity “Gambling with Lives” in 2018…

…after their son Jack, 24, committed suicide due to his addiction with gambling. The couple from Sheffield founded Gambling with Lives to support other gambling-bereaved families and to raise awareness of gambling-related suicide. The pair criticised the Government's gambling white paper that was published in April, saying that it goes “nowhere near” far enough.

What’s a white paper?

The Government’s white paper has been a long time coming and features a series of measures that are needed to ensure online gambling is as safe as possible, these will include tougher affordability checks and limits on online slot machine stakes, but all proposed legislation would be subject to further consultation.

When reflecting on their MBE, Liz said: “He (Prince William), said he didn't feel he could offer us congratulations wholeheartedly because the work that we did followed on from the death of our son. We talked about his work with men's mental health and that 500 deaths a year, about 10 per cent of all suicides, are related to gambling. And we talked about toxic forms of gambling that harm the brain. He just agreed, really.”

Mr Ritchie added that the Prince of Wales voiced how displeased he was of the news his beloved Aston Villa had just signed a three-year sponsorship deal with gambling platform BK8. Premier League clubs have all agreed to remove gambling sponsorships from the front of match-day shirts, however, this won’t come into effect until the end of the 2025/2026 season. Speaking about William, Mr Ritchie said: “He was not happy with it and he thought that gambling sponsorship would be banned.”

“He made it very clear that he didn't approve of the sponsorship”, said Liz. “We talked about the advertising and just the sheer scale of the advertising and the fact that that's really unpopular with the public. Basically, he was agreeing with us that it should not be a voluntary arrangement. This should be banned. This should be government legislation.”

Dedicating their MBE’s to their son who got addicted to underage gambling in sixth form, Mr Ritchie said: “As we sit here today, nothing has happened. It will be another two years before any of these changes are implemented. In that time, another 1,000 young people would have died. Jack can't be here to speak for himself but we speak with his voice. It's on behalf of all the people who've died that we've accepted it and all the people who've been campaigning and all the other families. It's not us alone. It doesn't belong to us. It belongs to all of them.”

Source:

“Prince William ‘Not Happy’ With Gambling Form Sponsoring Aston Villa, Say Yorkshire Campaigners”, yorkshirepost.co.uk, June 29, 2023.