In October, Ladbrokes posted a promoted tweet featuring Premier League footballers Philippe Coutinho, Jesse Lingard, and Kalidou Koulibaly with the text, “Can these big summer signings make the question marks over their performances go away?”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) questioned whether the ad violated its new rules regarding gambling marketing messages that have a “strong appeal” to children. Previously, the standard for gambling advertisements focused on whether the ads had a disproportionate appeal to children compared to adults. However, the Committee of Advertising Practice and the ASA introduced a new code this year, which prohibits gambling ads with a “strong appeal” to children. Under this new standard, ads that would appeal to a large number of children are banned, regardless of their appeal to adults.
The new rules primarily impact how celebrities can appear in gambling ads. According to the guidance for the new standard, Premier League footballers are generally not allowed to feature in gambling ads, unless the audience can be restricted to individuals over 18.
Ladbrokes claimed that they followed the new guidance by incorporating all available targeting and age-gating tools to ensure the ad could only be viewed by users aged 18 or older. They pointed out that their Twitter feed was only accessible to users who had confirmed their age as 18 or older. Additionally, they targeted the ad specifically to users aged 25 or older since Twitter lacks independent age verification.
Despite Ladbrokes’ efforts, the ASA upheld the complaint. They stated that Premier League footballers could appear in ads that had more robust age-gating measures, but Twitter’s age verification process was deemed insufficient for the Ladbrokes ad. The ASA specified that it would be acceptable for the ad to appear in a medium where individuals under 18 were completely excluded from the audience. This would require robust age verification through methods such as marketing lists verified by payment data or credit checking. They concluded that Ladbrokes had not excluded under-18s from the audience with the level of accuracy necessary for ads that strongly appeal to this age group.
The ASA also expressed doubt about Twitter’s reliability as an age-verification platform, as users self-verify their ages. They emphasized that Ladbrokes had not excluded individuals under 18 from the audience on Twitter with the required level of accuracy.
