Ad description
A website for Jeffbet, www.jeffbet.com, seen on 21 November 2023, featured a “BET £10 AND GET £30 FREE BET” promotion on the homepage. Terms and conditions stated “New Players Only” in small text and included a link to the full terms and conditions.
Issue
The complainant, who was not eligible for the promotion despite being a new JeffBet customer, challenged whether the ad was misleading.
Response
ProgressPlay Ltd t/a JeffBet said that they ensured promotional ads included as much detail as possible with regards to the terms and conditions of any promotion so that consumers could make an informed decision about whether or not to participate. They believed that, for the ad in question, there was not enough space to highlight that the promotional offer was only available to those who were new to the ProgressPlay network. Instead, they included that information in the terms and conditions, which could be found upon clicking the text “Full Terms Apply” in the ad. They provided a screenshot of those promotional terms and conditions; the ninth point stated “Any player can receive up to 1 (one) sport welcome bonus on the Progressplay Network”.
Jeffbet highlighted that further down the page, linked to from the ad, additional “Jeffbet Terms and Conditions” could be found, which detailed the definition of “Progressplay Network” as defined in the promotional terms and conditions. A further link was provided which listed ProgressPlay’s related brands.
They reiterated that the ad did not have sufficient space to detail that the welcome bet related to the whole ProgressPlay network, rather than Jeffbet itself, or to include all of the related network brands.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted that the ad, seen on the Jeffbet website, stated the promotional offer was open to “New Players Only”. We considered that consumers would understand from that text, and the context in which it was seen, that only those who did not already have a Jeffbet account were entitled to redeem the promotional offer. Furthermore, we noted that the “New Players Only” stipulation was listed in small print, alongside other terms and conditions of the promotion, such as the length of the promotion and the maximum pay out. We therefore considered consumers would understand that the text “New Players Only” referred to a full term or condition of the promotion and we considered that reinforced the impression that only new JeffBet customers were eligible for the promotion.
We noted that Jeffbet did not believe there was sufficient space in the ad to include the full detail of that promotional condition and because of that, they linked to the full terms and conditions in the ad. However, because the ad was placed on the Jeffbet website, we considered that the ad was not constrained by space or functionality requirements, and there was ample space to state any information which would be material to consumers in relation to the offer. We considered that any condition which defined the eligibility for the promotion would be significant to participants when making a decision to sign up to the offer, and therefore should be prominently displayed.
Furthermore, we understood that the “New Players Only” promotional offer applied to new customers of the ProgressPlay network, rather than new Jeffbet customers. We considered that this was material information which should have been made clear in the ad. In addition, we considered that consumers were unlikely to understand the term “ProgressPlay Network”. The ad should, therefore, have also stipulated that ProgressPlay owned a number of gambling websites, including Jeffbet, and that if any potential participant was already a customer with one of their other gambling platforms, then they would not be eligible for the offer. We considered, at a minimum, the ad should have included a prominent and accessible link to where consumers could find a list of all ProgressPlay owned gambling sites.
Because the ad gave the impression that all new Jeffbet customers were eligible for the promotion when that was not the case, we concluded that the ad was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 8.17, 8.17.1, 8.17.7 (Promotional marketing).
Action
The ad must not appear in its current form. We told ProgressPlay Ltd t/a Jeffbet to ensure that they did not misleadingly imply that customers could redeem a promotion if they were not eligible for it, and that significant conditions were not omitted from promotions.
CAP Code (Edition 12)
3.1 3.7 12.1 3.1 8.17 8.17.1 8.17.7 3.1 3.3 3.7
