Should the UK ban unlicensed overseas casinos from sponsoring football clubs?

The consultation on offshore gambling sponsorship landed with voters here largely on the side of intervention, the ban winning by a clear 24-point margin, but the more revealing fracture was between men and women rather than young and old. Men backed the crackdown by better than two to one; women, voting in smaller numbers, tilted the other way, split roughly five against seven.

Age told a less tidy story. The 55-64s, old enough to remember football sponsorship before the Premier League's gambling-money era, were the most convinced of any group that offshore casino deals like Everton's Stake.com arrangement should be stopped. The over-65s were the only age band to lean No, a reminder that scepticism of regulation cuts across generational lines here rather than following them neatly.

The result sits squarely on the fault line between football's dependence on gambling sponsorship money and growing unease — echoed by the Gambling Commission's own warnings — about clubs taking cash from operators who have walked away from UK licensing. Everton's shirt-sleeve deal with a firm that surrendered its licence is the kind of case that makes the argument for regulators almost write itself.

Yet the gender split suggests this is not the near-consensus the topline implies — it's a coalition, and not obviously a stable one.