The latest ruling “defies both precedent and common sense,” Flutter says.
UK.- A week ago, the UK’s Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) updated its guidance on gambling ads to try to clear up doubts about what kind of content should be considered to have “strong appeal” to under 18s. Nevertheless, some operators are more confused than ever after a series of rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority published yesterday. The self-regulating watchdog banned three ads, from Betway, Kwiff and Flutter’s Sky Bet, for their use of sporting figures or symbols.
For the Betway advert, the issue was the use of the Chelsea FC logo in clothing and scarves, which the operator believed was allowed under the rules. Kwiff was rapped for using an image of Sir Lewis Hamilton in a post about the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July 2024. Here, the operator said it believed motorsports to be adult-oriented and unlikely to be of “strong” appeal to minors. It also said the post was intended as editorial content.
In the case of Sky Bet, the offending ad was a promoted post on Twitter, now X, way back in February 2023. The post contained an embedded video clip from The Overlap football podcast showing Gary Neville discussing which team might win the Premier League. The Sky Bet logo appeared intermittently throughout the video, and on-screen text at the end stated “BROUGHT TO YOU BY SKY BET” followed by the BeGambleAware logo. Text in the caption stated: “Is Gary changing his title prediction?”.
No complaint from the public was received about the ad. Instead, the ASA lodged the complaint itself.
Sky Bet argued that Neville was best known today as a pundit and political commentator, and that his playing career had ended nearly 12 years previously, in 2011, when today’s 18-year olds would have been five or six years old. It believed that this met the CAP Guidance’s definition of “long retired” and therefore was at low risk of strongly appealing to under-18s. It also cited previous ASA rulings where more recently-retired footballers who had moved into punditry had been judged not to be of strong appeal to under-18s.
In March 2023, Neville had 5,504,262 Twitter followers, of which only 1 per cent were registered as aged 13–17. Sky Bet also provided details of the top 20 subjects that his followers tweeted about; those included US and domestic politics, political figures, business, finance and Government institutions.
The problem with social media age verification
The big issue for the ASA was the lack of reliability when it comes to age statistics from social media. In all three cases, the ASA considered that it would have been acceptable for the ads to appear in a medium where those aged under 18 could have been entirely excluded from the audience. But since many social media platforms have traditionally relied on users to self-verify their age, it was impossible to say for sure how many minors use the platforms, it said.
It said: “We understood that X in 2023, as with other media platforms, relied on users to self-verify their ages on signing up to the platform, and therefore under-18s could falsely claim they were over 18 when creating an account. We accepted that X had an additional measure in place, whereby third parties could report accounts that they believed were underage. Whilst helpful, we considered that measure was unlikely to effectively identify all accounts that had falsely claimed to be over 18.
The ASA cited an Ofcom report from 2022 (Children’s Online User Ages Quantitative Research Study) that indicated that 20 per cent of 8–17-year olds who had social media, used X. That same report indicated 32 per cent with at least one social media account had a registered user age of 18 or above.
The 2022 report also stated that “despite most platforms having a minimum age of 13, the research suggests that 6 in 10 children aged 8 to 12 who use these platforms are signed up with their own profile”.
“Given that evidence, we considered it was likely that there was at least a significant number of children in 2023 who had not used their real date of birth when signing up to X and were able to see and access content intended for those aged 18 or older, meaning they could view content from verified gambling accounts, both from following that account or through the X FYP functionality,” the ASA said.
The B/CAP Guidance classes retired footballers who have moved into punditry as likely to be of “moderate risk” of strong appeal to under-18s and that each case should be assessed on the basis of their social and other media profile. However, the Guidance also stated that anyone with a significant under-18 following on social media could be of “high risk”. The ASA took the view that Neville was likely to have to under-18s on the basis of his social and other media profiles.
It noted that the Guidance states: “a generally high social media following that attracts a significant absolute number of under-18 followers, as determined through quantitative or qualitative analysis, is likely to be considered an indicator of ‘strong’ appeal”.
Flutter has criticised the ruling. “We are now in a situation where a regulated operator is reprimanded over a tweet promoting a football show to over 25s while illegal black-market operators flood the internet and social media without any checks,” it said.
It added: “Not one person complained about this tweet, either to us or the ASA. Instead, the ASA lodged a complaint with itself and upheld its own complaint. We can only imagine the intense pressure the ASA is being put under by anti-gambling campaigners, but this ruling defies both precedent and common sense.”
Super Group’s Betway had argued in its defence that it has a sponsorship deal with Chelsea FC that allowed it to use the club’s visual assets. It said that banning the ad would set a “damaging precedent” for gambling sponsorships.
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