A friend over from the United States remarks on the ubiquitous, in-yer-face advertising of gambling websites at Premier League grounds and asks if that is something that we, the English, are comfortable with. It is not a bad question to ask in a week when it was predicted that British punters will lose £10 billion in 2008.

Nor is it a bad question to pose when at least two well-known managers in Britain have been known to struggle with gambling habits that stray dangerously close to addiction and players, including England squad members, continue to bet big sums on their sport in defiance of regulations.

Or at a time when Tim Henman, hardly a man to shoot his mouth off, talks about match-fixing in tennis as a fact of life and when basketball in the US – hence my friend’s concern - is reeling from the shock of a senior NBA referee staking money on his own games in one of the worst scandals to hit sport either side of the Atlantic.

Temptations will always be dangled and they will always be grabbed, particularly in a vulnerable sport such as tennis, where lowly ranked players can be nobbled with relative ease. These outbreaks are not a reason to prohibit gambling and in any case – as the US Government has been discovering with its legal challenges to online betting – that is the sort of battle that Canute tried to win.

But there is a difference between accepting the existence of gambling and allowing it to be flaunted across our football grounds and through our televisions. There are reasons why we should feel discomforted by the garish billboards and why we should be asking if sport should be such a powerful advertising vehicle for the gaming industry.

New legislation introduced last month allowed televised commercials by gambling companies for the first time, but only after 9pm. That watershed was introduced for a good reason – so children cannot be targeted – and yet there cannot be a 12-year-old in the country who has not been bombarded with adverts at Premier League grounds or England matches.

This has all happened without so much as a murmur from the FA and the Premier League. Indeed, in their representation to the Gaming Commission, they could not find any reason why gambling companies should be stopped from plastering their logos on the replica shirts worn by children, expressing concern that to do so may reduce the sport’s income. It was only late in the day that the law was tweaked so that eight-year-olds would not be walking advertisements for gaming companies.

It does not have to be this way. The French have outlawed all advertising of online gambling services within football grounds, which includes the players’ shirts and hoardings. But then France does not have a Government that seems less concerned with policing the gambling industry than making sure that it gets a piece of the action.

Ours has scrapped the 24-hour “sobering up” period before anybody can join a casino and, while plans for a Manchester supercasino are on hold, 17 others are proposed for towns such as Middlesbrough and Swansea. It has been billed as a regeneration programme, although building a casino in working-class towns seems a strange way to attack social deprivation.

It is about as sensitive as flashing up those adverts around Old Trafford in front of Wayne Rooney, who racked up £700,000 in gambling losses. Or West Ham United going into partnership with an online casino despite several of their players requiring treatment for addiction.

Like the Government, the football authorities talk of tighter controls, but the evidence is scant. The new legislation makes it a criminal offence for footballers to trade insider information, but you can take it from me that the vast majority of the players do not know the law has changed, never mind obey it.

There is much talk of the “memorandums of understanding” between regulatory organisations such as the FA and the betting exchanges, but the flow of information is strictly limited. So are successful prosecutions.

When Harry Redknapp moved from Southampton to Portsmouth, a staggering £16.7 million was wagered on Betfair. A lot of people seemed to know something was up, but after months of investigation the FA came up with nothing.

The harm may have been limited to individual wallets, but the stench it left hardly inspired hope that the truth will come out in more serious instances, such as the investigation into Nikolay Davydenko’s recent defeat by Martin Vassallo Arguello. About £3.4 million was staked – ten times the typical sum for a second-round match at the Poland Open – before Davydenko withdrew because of injury.

The gaming companies say that they have the checks to spot unusual activity and yet we are told that as many as 130 tennis matches since 2003 are under retrospective investigation.

Now tennis is said to be discussing with the gaming companies how it can profit from the wave of betting, which brings us to the central contradiction.

Sport is fixated as never before by corrupting influences and yet, at the same time, it has never been more eager to take every pound in revenue from the bookmaking industry. At this rate, it cannot be long before Paddy Power is inscribed on the Centre Court grass at Wimbledon.

- Alisher Usmanov considered buying into Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur before becoming a major shareholder at Arsenal. He could have bought a controlling stake in Tottenham for less than the £120 million that has bought him 23 per cent of their North London rivals.

The reason that the metals magnate turned down those opportunities, according to his advisers, is that Arsenal were in his blood, thanks to the work of Arsène Wenger. The English media sit down with Usmanov for the first time today. First question: name the Arsenal team who last won the championship.

- Lewis Hamilton was driving a rocket on wheels through torrential rain in the biggest race of his life and still found time to ponder how he was following in the trail of his hero, Ayrton Senna. At a time when ordinary mortals would be blowing gaskets, he had time to savour the experience.

David Beckham once claimed that, as he waited to take his penalty against Argentina during the 2002 World Cup finals, he found inspiration in thinking of all the obstacles he had overcome. Some were sceptical, but Hamilton’s revelation reminds us that one definition of world-class talent is the ability to slow down the world to your own speed.