Aiding & betting
ITV , Issue 1632 ITV needs to boost its finances following a steep fall in advertising, exacerbated by Amazon Prime Video's decision to take ads on its platform.

With this in mind the channel breathlessly announced the return of the gameshow You Bet! which revolves around studio audience members trying to predict the result of various challenges and celebrity guests facing forfeits like trying to eat lunch on a rollercoaster. New hosts Holly Willoughby and Stephen Mulhern will head up the 2024 version.

Ad attraction
While the format doesn't allow the audience to cash in, it won't stop the channel's advertisers from trying to do so. A show with such an overt link to betting will be an obvious target for online casinos, bingo sites and gambling firms. When Matthew Kelly's You Bet! was popular in 1990s primetime, gambling adverts were banned on TV.

Now revenue from betting companies is an important part of ITV's bottom line and, as any viewer of the channel's daytime horse racing coverage knows, there is no watershed for gambling advertising.

Paper trail
In last year's white paper which reviewed the 2005 Gambling Act, the authors considered the TV advertising rules and any potential link to problem gambling. In a decision welcomed by the gambling industry, they concluded there was no need to change the status quo.

The white paper claimed the gambling industry's TV advertising is well-regulated – by the Advertising Standards Authority and Ofcom – and "any further restrictions would outweigh possible negative consequences".

Campaign groups such as Gambling With Lives (set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide), had hoped for bookies' TV adverts to be banned, or at least a tightening of existing restrictions, such as a watershed to protect children and vulnerable people.

Will campaigners have any concerns about children being exposed to betting ads while watching ITV's new family-friendly game show? You bet!