ASA Adjudication on Littlewoods Gaming

Ad

An internet banner ad, for a gambling website, showed a cartoon image of Spiderman and stated "The Amazing Spiderman 25 Line Jackpot Slot £50 SIGN UP BONUS T's & C's apply Click Here for more ... ALL THIS AT onlinegamblerweb.com".

Issue

The complainant objected that the ad was irresponsible, because it was likely to appeal to children.

CAP Code

Response

Future Publishing said they had created the website onlinegamblerweb.com in partnership with Littlewoods Gaming (Littlewoods) and it was a landing page through which users could then link through to Littlewoods casino and poker websites to register and download software to play the games.  They said they had become aware that there were concerns about the ad before the ASA had contacted them and because of those concerns had promptly removed the ad from their websites and magazines.  They said they had no plans to use the ad again.

Future Publishing said they had not intended for the ad to appeal to or target anyone under 18 years of age.  They said MacFormat, the website where the ad had appeared, was a magazine primarily read by adults and according to its last reader survey the average reader age was 41 years.  They said they therefore considered that the ad was appropriately targeted on that website.

Future Publishing said both they and Littlewoods were committed to preventing underage gambling and sought to promote a responsible attitude towards gambling.  They pointed out that the onlinegamblerweb.com website clearly displayed that users had to be 18 years or over to play and throughout the registration process several conditions were displayed to alert the user that they had to be over 18 years to play.  They said there were also several procedures to prevent under 18s registering, accessing and using the gambling software available through the website and Littlewoods website.  For example, they said if a user set up a fraudulent account, they would be prevented from playing because they would have to provide credit card verification beforehand.  

Littlewoods said they had been running a similar 'Marvel Hero' campaign since 2005 and since that time they were not aware of any other complaints made in respect of brands such as Spiderman being used in their advertising or being associated with their games.  They said the campaign was not exclusive to Future Publishing and the ad had been run in several publications and across several websites.  They said that considering the extent to which their ads were circulated through print and online media they believed one complaint in three years was not representative of public opinion about their ads.  

Littlewoods said several other companies in the gaming industry used branded games such as Spiderman to appeal to responsible gamblers over the age of 18 years.  They believed that if those types of ads were really appealing to children and encouraging them to gamble then a larger number of people would have voiced their concerns that the ads were socially irresponsible.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted Future Publishing had already withdrawn the ad from their websites and magazines and did not intend to use it again.  We noted the website on which the ad had appeared had an average reader age of 41 years and we were therefore satisfied that the ad had not been directly targeted at children or young people.   

We noted, however, the Code stated that marketing communications should not be likely to be of particular appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture.  We acknowledged that Spiderman appealed to some adults but considered that the depiction of the popular comic book character was likely to have particular appeal to children and young people, regardless of the context in which it appeared.  We concluded that the ad breached the Code.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 57.2 and 57.4 (l) (Gambling).

Action

We welcomed Future Publishing's action to remove the ad and their assurance that they would not repeat it.  We told Littlewoods and Future Publishing to ensure that they did not use images that were likely to appeal to children in any future ads for gambling products.  We advised them to seek guidance from the CAP Copy Advice team when preparing similar ads in future.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)