Gambling companies sent offers of free bets and bonuses to entice a gambling addict back to their platforms for weeks after he killed himself.
Ryan Myers, a "happy-go-lucky" carpenter from Huyton, had just got back from a week-long family holiday in Turkey, where his dad John remembers the LFC supporter getting excited by the smell of sausages and bacon in a restaurant next to their hotel. Two days later, John rushed to the avid golfer's house in Toxteth after the 27-year-old posted on Facebook saying sorry for letting people down.
His "world fell apart" when he arrived to the sight of police and an ambulance outside. John said: "My son had just killed himself. I was in a terrible way. If somebody gets killed in a car crash, you can blame the driver of the car. If somebody dies of cancer, you can blame the illness. If somebody takes their own life, you've got nobody to blame, so the question is always, 'Why? Why? Why?'."
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John and Ryan's mum Alison searched for answers in their son's emails and Facebook messages after finding a betting slip on the floor of his house and seeing his card had been declined. Digging through his communications, they realised "how deep he was" in a gambling problem, and John was "angry" to see how relentless gambling companies' advertising was, with emails offering Ryan free bets because they hadn't heard from him in a week or two.
The UK is one of the world's biggest gambling markets, with profits of £14.2bn in 2020. A House of Lords report found 60% of the gambling industry's profits come from just 5% of its customers, those who "are already problem gamblers, or are at risk of becoming so". In England, roughly a third of a million people, and 55,000 children aged 11 to 16, have a gambling problem, according to the same report.
Ryan was trying to get help, asking one company he was betting with to self-exclude him, and talking to a recovering gambling addict he found on YouTube. John said: "One of the things my son said when he was talking to this guy was, every time he tried to stop, he couldn't get away.
"Because every time, he would get texts or emails, he would go out and it would be on the streets, it would be in adverts, in the paper, on the TV. He just couldn't get away from it. And that's what [gambling companies are] like, they're predatory.
"They look for people, they look for a chink in someone's armour, and they go for them. And when they start losing, and they can see they start losing, instead of trying to help them, they give them VIP status, and give them more credit, and give them more free bets."
He added: "The problem we've got is gambling is seen as a normal part of everyday life. People don't like coming forward because they're scared of the stigma, because when they try, people just say to them, 'Well just stop', as if they can.
"And that's one of the things that gets me when people in the government, people in the gambling industry, just put it all on the addict and say, 'Self-exclude, you do this, you do that'. What are they doing? What they're doing is getting people into gambling. What they're doing is grooming people into gambling. What they're doing is offering free bets after free bets after free bets to try to get people in."
There are 409 gambling-related suicides in England every year, according to a report by Public Health England in 2021. After Ryan died, John started talking to others affected by gambling addiction, in the hope of preventing others from experiencing the same loss.
Now he is walking with 60 people from Manchester to Liverpool, via the cities' football stadiums, demanding change. Organised by The Big Step, a campaign with the support of 27 clubs in the UK and Ireland, the protesters are calling on four Premier League clubs – Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United - to end all gambling advertising in football.
All four, including Ryan's beloved LFC, currently have a gambling sponsor or partner. Last month, Everton announced a shirt sponsorship deal with online casino Stake.com. A petition calling for the club to abandon the deal received more than 30,000 signatures, but Everton avoided legal problems with the deal after the UK government decided to shelve plans to ban gambling companies from sponsoring the shirts of English football clubs.
In the coming days, the government is due to release a white paper on gambling reform following a review of the Gambling Act 2005, which "liberalised the regulation of gambling, which has led to a substantial increase in gambling-related harm", according to the charity Gambling with Lives, which John is involved with.
Gambling with Lives hopes the review will result in not just an end to all gambling advertising, but also harm-based licensing conditions for gambling products, affordability checks, dangerous products being made safer with stake limits and slower speeds of play, an end to VIP schemes and 'free bet' bonuses.
As well as tighter regulation of the industry, the charity also demands better prevention and treatment for gambling addiction, with a comprehensive NHS programme, the implentation of evidence-based public health messages about the risks of gambling to life, health and wellbeing, and training for frontline health and support workers to recognise and diagnose gambling disorder.
A government policy paper calling for submissions of evidence to the review said: "Technological change has undoubtedly presented new risks, particularly in the form of more intensive products, accessible at any time of day without direct human interaction, accompanied by much more advertising, and involving increasingly rapid innovation. Technology has also given new opportunities to enhance player protections, which all those with an interest in safer gambling must capitalise on."
If you have a problem with gambling, you can contact the NHS Northern Gambling Service, a clinic offering specialist addiction therapy covering the whole of the north of England, on 0300 300 1490
If you've been bereaved by a gambling-related suicide, you can contact Gambling with Lives at support@gamblingwithlives.org
If you are in mental health distress, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123
If you want to self-exclude yourself from gambling website, you can sign up to GAMSTOP, a free service that stops the person using gambling sites and apps run by companies licensed in Great Britain.
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