It’s a fair bet that the new rules announced today aimed at preventing the gambling industry from targeting children will be welcomed by almost everyone. Who could be against a ban on betting ads popping up on sites, computer games or apps popular with kids, such as the promos that were once embedded in the I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here or Mario Kart apps? Given the extraordinary stats that show no fewer than 370,000 children aged 11 to 16 gamble each week – with 25,000 of those classed as problem gamblers – surely any move to keep young eyes away from temptation is to be applauded.

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But you only have to set out the planned steps to see why they don’t go far enough. The new rules from the Committee of Advertising Practice insist, for example, that gambling companies stop featuring celebrities or others who look under 25 in their ads. Sounds good, until you reflect that the betting companies could simply find a footballer who’s 26 or older to do the job instead: John Stones (24), say, could be subbed off, to be replaced by, I don’t know, the new £400,000-a-week man Aaron Ramsey (28).

Similarly, while it’s clearly good that the advertising regulator has banned ads such as three for Coral Interactive that featured animated images of a leprechaun, a rainbow and a pot of gold, what’s appealing to children is not always so obvious. Indeed, it’s often those sites that are ostensibly aimed at adults that lure kids, especially older ones, most.

It’s a familiar story, this, with the gambling industry either succumbing to, or imposing on itself, new rules that chiefly serve to highlight everything they’ll still be allowed to do. Take the voluntary “whistle-to-whistle” ban that will come into force this summer, barring online casinos from advertising their wares during sporting events that start before the 9pm watershed. Surely that means no more Ray Winstone urging us to bet “nowwww”. Not quite. Check the small print, and you see that such ads are only banned from five minutes before kick-off until five minutes after the final whistle. Which means Ray can keep urging viewers – including kids – to bet in the lead-up to a match and during the post-game analysis.

What’s more, gambling will continue to be visible – to children and everyone else – during every minute of most football matches. Betting companies can keep advertising on pitchside digital hoardings and on the most prime real estate of all: the shirtfronts of the players themselves. Nine of the 20 Premier League clubs are sponsored by betting firms, a figure even higher in the Championship, where 17 of the 24 clubs have bookmakers as shirt sponsors. Bear in mind, too, that outside the Premier League all three divisions of the English Football League are sponsored by Sky Bet.

It adds up to what industry analysts describe as the transformation of football into an “immersive environment” for gambling. Betting is inescapable. Marc Etches, the chief executive of GambleAware, speaks for many when he says: “We have a generation of fans who believe you have to bet on football to enjoy it.” In the minds of many fans, especially young men, gambling and football are inseparable. The result is that nearly half a million people – 430,000 – are thought to be problem gamblers, with another 2 million at risk of heading that way, according to the Gambling Commission.

So, sure, it’s good that there will be some restrictions on TV advertising and on websites that are unarguably a draw for kids. But set against a gambling industry that is spending £1.5bn a year on marketing, and spending five times more online than it does on TV commercials, these moves look pretty feeble.

The truth is, they are no more than tinkering at the edges when compared to the remedy that looks increasingly obvious: a reversal of the move made by the last Labour government in 2007 to lift the blanket ban on TV advertising that had previously held the gambling companies back. Until that mistake is corrected, the near-ubiquitous presence of gambling – especially in and around sport – and, with it, problem gambling will persist. You can bet on it.

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist