ASA finds no fault with Fitzdares’ Stuart Broad X ad

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has found a Fitzdares ad featuring former England cricketer Stuart Broad not to be of strong appeal to under 18s after a complaint from GambleAware.

The charity challenged the advert, seen on X on 13 August 2024, saw Broad announce he had struck a partnership with the operator as an official brand ambassador.

He tweeted, alongside a photo of him playing cricket: “Delighted to have teamed up with @Fitzdares. They’re an independent operator, build genuine personal relationships with their members and play the game the right way.

“They’ve given me a £500 free bet pot every month to raise cash for Motor Neurone Disease. Let me know if you’ve got any tips for the upcoming PL [Premier League] season!? #Ad.”

The complaint was centred around whether Broad was likely to have been of strong appeal to under 18s, which is a breach of advertising regulations in the UK.

Following the complaint, Fitzdares told the ASA it was satisfied Broad was not of strong appeal to people under 18 and that it had carried out a “thorough risk assessment” against the CAP guidance on gambling and lotteries advertising.

This was based on Broad, now 38, starting his professional cricket career in 2006 and retiring in 2023.

After retiring, Broad appeared as a pundit for Sky Sports, which the operator believed made him unlikely to appeal to children.

Outside of sport, Broad has appeared on TV talk shows sporadically, with the operator noting he was on the Jonathon Ross talk show in 2010 and comedy quiz programme A League of their Own in 2023.

Popping up in several Amazon Prime and BBC documentaries on cricket over the years, Broad had not featured on any popular podcasts or YouTube shows, while his partnerships were in finance, insurance and cars – industries of limited appeal to children, according to Fitzdares.

When providing social media data for the former cricketer, Broad did not have TikTok or Snapchat, his YouTube account had one video uploaded nine years ago and his Facebook account had been inactive for several years.

Broad also had roughly 860,000 followers on Instagram, with 7,500 registered as under 18 in the UK, and 1.3 million followers on X – 76 being under 18 and in the UK. It was also noted that a large number of his followers were based in India.

In announcing the decision, the ASA noted the CAP guidance which stated that “sportspeople involved in cricket who didn’t have a significant role in the sport were of ‘low risk’”.

The ad watchdog considered Broad captained England’s OneDay and Twenty20 teams and was known as one of the country’s best Test bowlers, taking over 500 wickets over the course of his career.

Despite being one of cricket’s most prominent players during his career, the ASA said Broad had a reduced role in the sport since his retirement and “was less likely to be of appeal to under-18s than current England cricket star players”.

When considering his social media following and wider presence, the body concluded his partnerships were with brands that were “adult-oriented” and his limited media profile “was not likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s”.

The ASA said: “We considered that there was nothing in the way Stuart Broad was presented in the ad that would have strongly attracted the attention of under-18s or was likely to render him of strong appeal.

“For those reasons, we concluded that the ad was not of strong appeal to people aged under 18.”

The post ASA finds no fault with Fitzdares’ Stuart Broad X ad first appeared on EGR Intel.

 GambleAware launched a complaint against the social media post featuring former England cricketer Stuart Broad last year, with regulator ruling the ad was not of strong appeal to under 18s
The post ASA finds no fault with Fitzdares’ Stuart Broad X ad first appeared on EGR Intel.