The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against BOYLE Sports and ruled that an advert on the Racing Post website had the “mechanics of a promotion which encouraged frequent and repetitive gambling”.
The paid-for display ad appeared weekly, between 9 February and 8 March, in the run up to the Cheltenham Festival and included the text: “Bank builder jackpot” and “Up to £60 in free bets share of £10k every week.”
The small print added that customers who placed or had bets settled worth £10/€10 or more with minimum odds of 1/1 on selected sports, would earn free bets on Cheltenham depending on how many days a week they bet.
The offers ranged from £4/€4 for four days’ worth of bets up to £5/€5 and a share of the £10,000/€10,000 weekly jackpot for seven days. Following one complaint, the ASA investigated and upheld the complaint.
The defence
In its response, the operator said that the financial requirement could be met through one qualifying bet of, or multiple bets totalling, at least £10 and that the qualifying days did not need to be consecutive, apart from when qualifying for the seven-day promotion.
BOYLE Sports added that customers “did not need to progress to the full seven-day tier”, could opt to only participate in one promotional week and did not have to take part during the month-long promotion.
The bookmaker also argued the structure of the offer and the availability of the lower-tier rewards, as well as there being no requirement to bet on consecutive days or throughout the entire duration of the promotion, “did not encourage behaviour that was socially irresponsible or could lead to financial harm”.
It also stated the details, including qualifying stake and expiry dates, were for transparency around conditions and not to pressure players to take part.
The operator said it avoided celebratory images or anything that suggested guaranteed success, while it also did not imply gambling was a way to improve financial security or that it was risk-free.
BOYLE Sports also provided stats in its response to the watchdog, which showed that approximately 2.5% of qualifying customers reached the seven-day tier status each promotional week and that the weekly range sat between 2.3% and 2.8%. The majority of customers qualified without placing a bet every day, BOYLE Sports added.
Adding that 0.5% of customers with at least one bet qualified on each of the 28 days, the operator said it believed it showed “this was not how customers generally engaged with the promotion”.
Internal data also revealed cash-customers on average placed between 28 and 32 bets per week and were active roughly three-and-a-half to four betting days per week.
Players who qualified for the promotion were “relatively active on relevant sports” before the ad and placed bets on an average of 5.6 days per week before the promotional period. That increased to six days per week once the promotion was up and running.
The qualifying stake was “consistent with prior ordinary behaviour”, with £15.97 the average stake for racing and football, which was £10 above the qualifying stake for the promotion, the bookmaker pointed out.
The Racing Post received no complaints about the ad in question.
The verdict
In upholding the complaint, the ASA acknowledged that only customers aiming to achieve the “maximum benefit” would need to bet on consecutive days but that “betting on five or six days in a week would require some gambling on consecutive days, and that even customers opting for the lowest level of benefit, at four days, were encouraged by the ad to place eligible bets on more days of a promotional week than not”.
To receive the £60 in free bets and share of £10,000 every week, the ASA found that the ad “encouraged” players to place bets daily due to the aforementioned text and that while a larger stake did not increase the reward, “we noted that full participation for a share of the £10K every week, required bets every day for 28 days and cost at least £280”.
It added: “We understood that BOYLE Sports held customer data that showed the maximum route of betting every day in a promotional week was not typical of customers who qualified for the promotion; neither was a pattern of betting every day of every week for all four weeks.
“We understood that BOYLE Sports also held data that they had interpreted as showing that the number of days in a week that qualifying customers bet on average had not increased significantly, compared to a period before the promotion.
“Notwithstanding that, we considered that the mechanics of the promotion which encouraged frequent and repetitive gambling on four to seven days out of every week, over a four-week period, including the requirement to use the free bets in the subsequent weeks to which they were accumulated, could lead to financial harm.
“For those reasons, we concluded that the ad encouraged behaviour that was socially irresponsible or could lead to financial harm.”
The ASA told BOYLE Sports that the ad must not appear in that form again and that in future, ads should not encourage frequent and repetitive participation.
In other news, BOYLE Sports has been unveiled as the UK and Ireland betting partner of Premier League club Leeds United.
The post ASA raps BOYLE Sports for encouraging “socially irresponsible” betting in Cheltenham ad first appeared on EGR Intel.
Advertising watchdog rules ad on Racing Post website breached social responsibility rules by encouraging behaviour that could lead to financial harm
The post ASA raps BOYLE Sports for encouraging “socially irresponsible” betting in Cheltenham ad first appeared on EGR Intel.