Celebrity endorsements: How impactful are they for gambling products?

Collaborations with celebrities, public figures and sports stars have long been a widely used advertising strategy by brands. However, a new international survey by YouGov shows that consumers don’t think they work in the gambling sector.  

In a new survey across 17 markets, YouGov asked consumers how effective they think are celebrities or influencers at promoting various goods and services. The data reveals that among the 11 categories we asked about, gambling products rank low on the list with only about one in ten global consumers saying that a public figure can effectively endorse gambling products (9%). As a sector, gambling is ahead only of financial services (8%). 

The view that celebrity endorsements are effective for gambling products is most pervasive among Brits with one in seven consumers saying so (14%). A close second are consumers in Australia (13%), where there’s been a recent ban on using credit cards for online gambling. A similar share of consumers in Sweden (13%) are also of this opinion.

Americans are also ahead of the global average (12%), as are consumers in Mexico (11%), Germany (11%) and Spain (10%). 

The data indicates that in general, consumers in Asia are less likely than the global average to consider star-studded endorsements for gambling products as effective. In Hong Kong, for instance, just a small proportion (5%) tell us they feel these promotions are fruitful, followed by consumers in Singapore (5%) and China (4%).

Drilling deeper into the data suggests that global consumers aged 55 years and over are twice as likely as those aged 18-24 years to consider celebrity endorsements on gambling products as effective (18-24-year-olds: 6%, 25-34-year-olds:7%; 35-44-year-olds: 9%; 45-54-year-olds: 9%; 55+: 12%). Clearly, an attitudinal difference among global consumers that is related to age is evident when it comes to public figures endorsing gambling brands. 

It’s also worth noting that among the categories we asked about, it’s in the gambling sector that older people are more likely to believe that celebrities are influential.

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Methodology: The data is based on the interviews of adults aged 18 and over in 15 markets with sample sizes varying between 509 and 2,124 for each market. All interviews were conducted online in August 2021. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples.