Betfred ruled to have breached ASA Gambling rules in AJ Tweets

[News Hound]

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled three tweets from Betfred concerning an Anthony Joshua fight earlier this year breached guidelines

Read the full article here: Betfred ruled to have breached ASA Gambling rules in AJ Tweets

 

[bamberfishcake]

Wow. How common is something like this? Is this the first fine of its kind?

This rule is pretty ambitious:

'Last year the ASA updated their rules which now state that advertisements cannot target under 18’s by “reflecting or being associated with youth culture.”'

Surely using anybody famous in advertising is appealing to youth culture? There are a few footballers and rock stars that spring to mind that are associated with casinos, not to mention the catalogue of games by Play'n GO featuring rock bands.

 

[jasonuk]

While they have been tightening the rules on who can feature in gambling material, this seems like a significant change in direction...

By that logic, you could fairly quickly extend it to all "popular culture", because things that appeal to 18-30 year olds are probably going to be popular with 16-18 year olds as well... which means the ASA has just lit the fuse on the dynamite and we're all waiting for the inevitable explosion.

If this had been one of those comedy boxing fights between two alleged crypto fraudsters youtubers then I think the ASA has more of a point... but this was a professional bout.

The

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seems to agree with that suggestion, given the ASA have commented in their analysis that around 6% of his Instagram followers were underage...

The bookies did admit Joshua is hugely popular across social media, with 29.3m followers worldwide, but argued they were "overwhelmingly adult".

However, the ASA found about a million of Joshua's 15.7m Instagram followers were registered as under-18, as well as 82,000 of his followers on Snapchat. The watchdog found this to be "a significant number" meaning Joshua was "of inherent strong appeal" to a young audience.

If the ASA wants to ban popular culture from gambling then they should phrase it as such - this feels like a bad ruling to me.

 

[Webzcas]

Yes bad ruling may well be. But unlike Betfred's assertion that AJ appeals exclusively to over 18's, good luck with the appeal.

The marketing of Anthony Joshua is huge to the extent that it transcends the sport of Boxing. Case in point Under Armour, the reason kids wear their gear is pretty much down to AJ being a long time brand ambassador of theirs.

Besides, when I was a kid growing up, the likes of Lloyd Honeyghan, Frannk Bruno and Barry McGuigan were also massive sporting icons to be looked up to.

 

[satchnz]

…Frannk Bruno…

Sorry to hijack the thread, but that name brings back some memories growing up in New Zealand and playing Frank Bruno’s boxing on my ZX Spectrum!

 

[Webzcas]

I had that game on the ZX Spectrum! Although not as good as

 

[jasonuk]

Yes bad ruling may well be. But unlike Betfred's assertion that AJ appeals exclusively to over 18's, good luck with the appeal.

They didn't say exclusively, they said "overwhelming adult" - which matches what the ASA research claimed... the dispute is that the ASA believes 6% is "significant" where Betfred does not.

By that logic, would they be allowed to mention any competition or competitor going forward? It seems like potentially a shadow ban of sports-related gambling promotion on social media

I had that game on the ZX Spectrum! Although not as good as

If we wanted to stay on the gambling theme.... welcome to fight night!

 

[satchnz]

I had that game on the ZX Spectrum! Although not as good as

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I’ve not heard of this one.

I used to hire a lot of my games via a rental place in NZ that mailed rentals out. Had them for a week each. Of course I’d make backups of the games and only play the backup so the original remained intact as possible for the next customer. However I was really crap at recording over (deleting) the backups after mailing the game back…