Ad description
An email for Golden Tiger Casino, an online casino site, received on 9 October 2015 stated "Congratulations [recipient's account ID name] - You're a weekly winner. £1500 FREE! Welcome Bonus. We are offering you: £1500 Free to play for one hour! Use our money to play our games. If you win, you get to keep it. Deposit is required to claim your winnings". It also stated "Limited time offer! Mobile users get 30 free spins. No deposit required. Plus £1500 in welcome bonuses. Click here to claim now". The ad included a footnote which stated "Terms and conditions may apply".
Issue
The complainant, who took up the offer, challenged whether the claim "if you win, you get to keep it" was misleading as it failed to make clear that a wagering requirement applied before consumers could withdraw their winnings.
Response
Apollo Entertainment Ltd said the email promoted Golden Tiger Casino’s welcome bonus offer, but they did not believe it was indicative of the advertising of the sales promotion as a whole. They explained that when recipients clicked through from the email, they were taken to the promotion’s landing page on the Golden Tiger Casino website.
The landing page stated “… Any bonuses given requires [sic] 60 times play through before cashin [sic]” which they believed made clear that such a requirement applied. The wagering requirement meant that account holders who used a particular amount of money from the welcome bonus to place bets had to wager that amount 60 times before they could withdraw their winnings, e.g. if they used £10 from the bonus amount, they had to place bets to the value of £600 before withdrawing their winnings. Apollo said other terms and conditions were easily accessible via the hyperlink provided on the landing page of the website.
Apollo believed the email was factual in that consumers could withdraw whatever they won, provided that they met the wagering requirement stated above. They said that in order for consumers to claim the offer, they had to click on the link for “account registration” where they were provided with further a link to the terms and conditions. They said in order to complete registration, consumers had to confirm they had read and accepted the terms and conditions.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered the email included an offer that encouraged recipients to register an account with the Golden Tiger Casino and therefore, consumers should have been made aware of any significant applicable conditions affecting the offer.
We acknowledged that the email stated “terms and conditions may apply”, but we understood from Apollo that consumers were presented with a hyperlink to the terms and conditions terms via a hyperlink from the promotion’s landing page. We therefore considered that the terms and conditions did apply and furthermore, that they were presented to consumers two clicks away from the email. The email should therefore have stated that terms and conditions applied (rather than that they “may apply”) and have included all conditions which might have affected a consumer’s decision to take up the offer.
The email stated “if you win, you get to keep it”, a claim which we understood was subject to a wagering requirement. The requirement meant account holders had to wager the amount of money they used from the bonus 60 times before they could withdraw their winnings. We considered that was material information which was likely to affect a consumer’s decision on whether or not to take up the offer, although we did acknowledge that this condition was made clear after consumers clicked through to the promotion’s landing page. Because we considered the wagering requirement was material information, it should have been made clear to consumers before they took the decision and further step to click through. Consequently, we considered the omission of that material information was so significant that it was likely to mislead consumers into understanding the claim “if you win [using our money], you get to keep it” to mean that it was free of any further conditions, other than placing a deposit. Because that was not the case, we concluded the email was misleading.
The email breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 8.17 and
8.17.1
8.17.1
How to participate
How to participate, including significant conditions and costs, and other major factors reasonably likely to influence consumers' decision or understanding about the promotion
(Significant conditions for promotions).
Action
The email must not appear again in its current form. We told Apollo Entertainment Ltd to ensure that their ads included all the applicable significant conditions for promotions where their omission was likely to mislead.
