ASA Adjudication on The British Greyhound Racing Board

Ad

A TV ad for greyhound racing. On-screen text stated "Download your local track vouchers ANIGHTATTHEDOGS.COM". At the end of the ad onscreen text and a voiceover stated "For special offers at your local dog track go to anightatthedogs.com".

Issue

A viewer, who had downloaded a voucher from the website, complained that the ad was misleading, because the voucher she had received did not entitle her to any benefits.

BCAP TV Code

Response

The British Greyhound Racing Board (BGRB) said the ad was an updated version of one first screened in autumn 2006. The first ad had been cleared by the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC). The current ad had been amended to include the text "Download your local dog track vouchers at ANIGHTATTHEDOGS.COM". The current ad had been cleared by ITV sales based on the first clearance from the BACC.

The BGRB explained that they did not own the 29 licensed greyhound racing stadia located across Great Britain. They said they were the governing body and the racecourses were individually owned. They said the national TV ad campaign had been intended to promote awareness of greyhound racing and to lead viewers to a website portal where racecourses could deal directly with the person making the enquiry. They said the TV ad did not, and could not in itself, provide a unique offer that could be applicable to all racecourses.

They said all 29 licensed greyhound stadia were invited and actively encouraged to participate in the campaign. The BGRB said Ward Lovett, the agency that handled the campaign, asked all stadia to advise them of promotional offers being run. The stadia were asked to update Ward Lovett if any of those offers expired or new offers were introduced. The BGRB said some stadia failed to notify Ward Lovett of any promotional offers, while several others opted to promote their own web pages (which contained offer information) rather than supply anightatthedogs.com with that information. In each of those cases, visitors to the anightatthedogs.com website who clicked through to request offer information at these stadia were greeted by a message, which invited them to visit the stadium's own website.

The BGRB said, however, the uniform structure of the website was set up to allow visitors to view the available offers at each track and enter their own name and e-mail address to have 'vouchers' representing offers sent to them via e-mail. They said where tracks had opted to merely display their own web address, viewers who subsequently requested offer information to be sent by e-mail would have received an e-mail which merely reminded them to visit the track's own website to read about offer information. They said the complainant's local track was one example of that.

The BGRB said although the approach was somewhat clumsy and might require future modification, they believed that the ad was not misleading. They said the ad did not refer to 'offers' or 'discounts' but merely to "vouchers".

ITV said the greyhound tracks within the BGRB were formed by groups of tracks through to individually owned tracks and each had autonomy to either promote special offers or not. They said they understood all but two tracks had run special offers during the campaign period. They said the offers were fluid and could be withdrawn or new offers could be introduced within days. They said the natural reference point to establish detail on offers was via the collective website, anightatthedogs.com, where interested customers could establish details of offers by track. They said the ad promoted the website as a reference point and at no time suggested that all tracks were making special offers.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA acknowledged that the BGRB had invited all the 29 licensed greyhound stadia to provide specific offers through the anightatthedogs.com website but that some had chosen to promote their own web pages instead.

We noted the structure of the website meant that consumers were invited to enter their details to receive a 'voucher' regardless of whether it was available. We noted the complainant, after she had entered her details on the anightatthedogs.com website, had received an e-mail with the subject heading "Your Complimentary Voucher" but which contained only text stating "For full details of all our offers visit www.crayford.com".

We considered that consumers would understand the text "download your local track vouchers", especially in conjunction with the claim "for special offers at your local dog track go to anightatthedogs.com", to mean that they could obtain discounts or offers that could be used at their local track from the anightatthedogs.com website. Because that was not possible for all local tracks we considered that the ad was likely to mislead consumers.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rule 5.1 (Misleading advertising).

Action

The ad should not be broadcast again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)