Ad description
A post on Stuart Broad’s X page, seen on 13 August 2024, stated “Delighted to have teamed up with @Fitzdares. They’re an independent operator, build genuine personal relationships with their members & 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 season!? #Ad”. An image of Stuart Broad playing cricket was included in the post.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad included an individual who was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s and, therefore, breached the Code.
Response
Fitzdares Ltd said they had carried out a thorough risk assessment of Stuart Broad against the CAP guidance on gambling and lotteries advertising and were satisfied to a high degree that he was not of strong appeal to under-18s.
Mr Broad was a 38-year-old former cricketer who played Test cricket for England and One Day & Twenty20 cricket as captain for the national team. He started his professional career in 2006 and retired in 2023. He was awarded an MBE in 2017 and a CBE in 2023. He was also the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year runner up. He had worked on the punditry team at Sky Sports where he covered England matches and The Hundred. Fitzdares believed that detailed pundit-based cricket discussions were not of strong appeal to children.
In terms of his general media profile, Mr Broad had appeared sparingly on talk shows, such as the Jonathan Ross show in 2010 and A League of Their Own in 2023. He had appeared in the Amazon Prime documentaries The Test and Ben Stokes: Phoenix From The Ashes, as well as How To Win The Ashes on BBC iPlayer in 2023. Mr Broad had not featured in any ongoing popular podcasts or YouTube shows. Fitzdares said his partnerships were predominantly with brands in sectors such as finance, insurance and the automotive industry, all of which typically did not appeal to children. Those partnerships included a well-known UK-based wine retailer, and an accounting software company.
Fitzdares provided social media data for Mr Broad, which showed that roughly 7,500 followers across all of his accounts were registered as being under the age of 18 and in the UK. Mr Broad had approximately 860,000 followers on Instagram, with 7,500 being registered as under 18 and in the UK. He had 1.3m followers on X, with 76 being registered as under 18 and in the UK. A large number of his followers on both platforms were based in India, which Fitzdares believed was due to cricket’s huge popularity in that country. Mr Broad’s Facebook page and YouTube account had been inactive for several years. His YouTube account featured one video, which was uploaded nine years ago. Mr Broad did not have a TikTok or Snapchat account.
Fitzdares said the content of the ad did not feature any imagery that would have appealed to children.
Assessment
Not upheld
The CAP Code stated that marketing communications for gambling products must not be likely to be of strong appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture. They must not include a person or character whose example was likely to be followed by those aged under 18 years or who had strong appeal to those aged under 18. The ASA expected advertisers to provide evidence that they had identified what persons or characters were generally known for outside the context of an ad, and had used appropriate sources of data and information to assess their likely level of appeal to under-18s.
We assessed whether Mr Broad was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s. CAP Guidance stated that prominent sportspeople involved in sports like cricket that, at the highest level, had a significant national profile, were of “high risk” of appealing to under-18s, but that sportspeople involved in cricket who didn’t have a significant role in the sport were of “low risk”.
Stuart Broad was a retired England cricket player who captained the OneDay and Twenty20 teams on several occasions. He was widely considered to be one of England’s greatest ever Test bowlers and was the side’s second most-capped Test cricketer. He had taken over 500 wickets in Test Cricket from 2006 until his retirement in 2023. He had also taken part in several Ashes tours, all of which received a large amount of media coverage. We considered that during his prime, he was one of the most prominent and well-known sportspeople involved in cricket. However, since his retirement, his role in the sport had been limited to commentating and analysing matches. We therefore considered that since his retirement, his role in the sport had been significantly reduced, and that he was less likely to be of appeal to under-18s than current England cricket star players.
We next considered how likely it was that Mr Broad would have appealed strongly to under-18s based on his UK social media and general profiles.
We firstly acknowledged that Stuart Broad did not have a strong media presence in the UK outside of his career as a former cricket player and cricket commentator. We considered he was a well-known public figure, and he had appeared on a variety of talk shows, such as A League of Their Own in 2023. However, the vast majority of the programmes he appeared on were focused specifically on cricket. We also considered his partnerships were predominantly with brands that were adult-oriented.
Fitzdares provided data which showed a total of approximately 7,500 followers across all Stuart Broad’s social media accounts were registered as being under the age of 18 and in the UK. Also, Mr Board had 76 X followers and 7,500 of his Instagram followers who were registered as under 18 and from the UK. His Facebook page and YouTube account had been inactive for several years and he did not have a TikTok or a Snapchat account. We considered that the low absolute figures indicated that Mr Broad did not have strong appeal to those who were aged under 18 and living in the UK, which was where the ad was seen. Given his low absolute numbers of under-18 UK social media followers, in combination with his limited media profile and because he had retired from playing cricket, we considered Stuart Broad was not likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s.
Lastly, 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.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 16.1, 16.3 and 16.3.12 (Gambling), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
