Two Advertising Standards Authority's rulings after complaints

UK advertising regulator bans Coral ad, clears Ladbrokes advert

Ladbrokes and Coral are GVC Holdings' brands.
2020-06-03
Reading time 2:31 min
The ASA upheld one complaint issued against a March 2020 post on Coral’s Twitter page after a challenge was raised concerning irresponsibility. Also, the watchdog cleared a February 2020 Ladbrokes advert despite five complaints against it, arguing it did not encourage gambling behaviour that was socially irresponsible. 

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has pulled an advertisement from Coral, but cleared one by Ladbrokes, despite receiving five complaints suggesting it encouraged gambling behaviour that was socially irresponsible.

The UK's regulator of advertising upheld one complaint issued against a post on Coral’s Twitter page after a challenge was raised concerning irresponsibility, and warned that the advert must not appear again in its current form.

A Tweet on Coral’s Twitter page, seen in March 2020, featured a text encouraging the operator’s customers to place their bets and also featured a link to a video ad featuring a jockey set to fall off his horse and a further text encouraging people to place another bet even if they lost.

Addressing the complaint, Coral noted that the ‘Fail to Finish’ promotion did not encourage repeated or socially irresponsible gambling, reiterating that “consumers were not obliged to take up the offer and did not have to use additional funds to qualify for the offer if they decided to have another go,” SBC News reports. The firm “did not consider that the ad applied undue pressure to place another bet or encouraged gambling any more than what a consumer would normally gamble.”

The ASA understood the ad promoted a ‘Fail to Finish’ offer which gave consumers a free bet token matching their bet value up to £10 in the event that their horse failed to finish. “We acknowledged that the promotion did not oblige consumers to take up the offer and that consumers did not have to use additional funds to qualify for the offer,” the regulator said. “However, we considered that the claim ‘Have another go’, together with the video ad which featured a man whose mood was instantly lifted following a free bet back, gave the impression that the decision to gamble had been taken lightly and was therefore likely to encourage some consumers to take up the offer repetitively. For that reason, we concluded that the ad was likely to encourage gambling behaviour that was potentially harmful and therefore breached the code.”

In addition, the ASA cleared a Ladbrokes advert despite five individuals submitting a complaint against it, concluding it “did not portray, condone or encourage gambling behaviour that was socially irresponsible.” 

The five complainants believed the ad, seen on February 29, 2020, showed people who were addicted to gambling taking part in scenarios that mimicked gambling as part of their everyday lives, and they challenged whether the ad breached the code by portraying gambling as taking priority in life.

Ladbrokes responded that the advert was intended to show the excitement of gaming in a metaphorical way that exaggerated real life, with analogies not suggesting that gambling took precedence over the characters’ work or other daily activities.

The ASA said in its assessment in clearing the ad: “The ad presented three characters engaging in everyday tasks and real-life scenarios that appeared to remind them of different online casino games: a slot machine; blackjack game; and roulette wheel. The ASA considered that whilst the characters were depicted as momentarily reminded of gambling and engaged in that analogy of the situation, they were not so distracted that they didn’t continue with those tasks.”

And it added: “We also considered that the brief scenarios depicted did not present gambling as indispensable or imply that it took priority in any aspect of the characters’ lives. We therefore concluded that the ad did not portray, condone or encourage gambling behaviour that was socially irresponsible, or portray gambling as indispensable or as taking priority in life.”

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