TLDR
- Former Stoke City player Tony Kelly lost more than £500,000 to gambling during his football career.
- He founded Red Card Gambling, a charity that teaches young footballers about gambling risks.
- Kelly says the UK’s new gambling levy, set to raise about £100 million a year, spends too much on research.
- He says bet365’s owners, the Coates family, have not replied to his requests, and Stoke told him he was not welcome at a match.
- Kelly says Tranmere and Coventry show clubs can survive without gambling sponsors.
Former Stoke City player Tony Kelly lost more than £500,000 to gambling during his football career. He now runs a charity that warns young players about the risks, and he says it needs more money to keep going.
Kelly made 179 professional appearances for clubs including Stoke, Leyton Orient, Bury, Colchester United, Cardiff City, and Hull City. He told Gambling Insider this week that without his addiction, the number could have passed 400.
His losses were far more than his salary in the lower divisions. He says stress over money made his form uneven, and he never told his managers.
Former Stoke manager Lou Macari, Kelly says, would describe him as “out of this world” one week and unrecognizable the next.
Red Card Gambling Seeks More Funding
Kelly founded Red Card Gambling after his recovery. The charity runs education programs, mostly for young footballers, and he tells his story in his latest book, My Redemption: It’s Full Time.
He says clubs keep asking him to speak to academy players aged 16 to 19. He has a waiting list, but the charity needs more funding to reach them.
Last year, the UK government brought in a statutory levy on licensed gambling operators. It replaces a voluntary system and aims to raise around £100 million a year for research, prevention, and treatment.
Kelly says too much of that money goes to research instead of education. “While that’s going on, hundreds of thousands of people are still suffering gambling harm,” he says.
He is open to taking money from operators. In 2023, a Betway-backed project let his charity deliver around 80 workshops at non-league clubs in England.
Not every operator has responded. Kelly says he has emailed and written to the Coates family, who own bet365, and heard nothing back. Peter Coates signed Kelly as Stoke chairman in 1990.
Stoke, still owned by the family, also told Kelly he was not welcome as a guest at an upcoming match. An email seen by Gambling Insider cited a conflict of interest.
Gambling Sponsorship in Football
Kelly says gambling was common when he played in the 1990s, with card games on team buses. Today, players can bet online at any time, which he says makes a problem easier to hide.
He also says bans for players caught betting on football, such as Tottenham midfielder Sandro Tonali, can make players afraid to ask for help.
From this season, Premier League clubs no longer show gambling brands on the front of their shirts. The logos have moved to sleeves and still appear around the pitch, a change Kelly says “doesn’t make sense.”
A recent House of Lords report called for a full ban on gambling ads. Kelly does not go that far, but he wants ads to show real harms, like tobacco warnings.
He points to League Two side Tranmere and to Coventry, which dropped sponsor Boylesports about 18 months ago and won promotion last season. Both clubs, he says, are fine.
Kelly’s charity now sponsors non-league side North West London FC with a gambling awareness message. He believes gambling sponsors will leave football in time, and he plans to keep pushing for funding until then.
