Ad description
An in-app ad, promoting an offer for the game “Marble Race Live” in the William Hill App, seen on 17 May 2025. The headline text stated “Enjoy £40 on us! When you opt in and stake £20”. Small text underneath stated the Terms and Conditions including the text “Min.£40 stake on Marble Race Live”.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim “Enjoy £40 on us! When you opt in and stake £20” was misleading, because they later understood that a minimum stake of £40 was required.
Response
WHG (International) Ltd t/a William Hill Online said that the complainant viewed the promotion in their mobile app, where one banner placement displayed incorrect wording: “Enjoy £40 on us! When you opt in and stake £20.” They said that the small print underneath included the correct requirement of “Min. £40 stake on Marble Race Live”. They acknowledged that the incorrect wording in the banner contradicted the nature of the promotion, but appeared in the mobile app and web banner due to a manual edit made during resizing for layout purposes. Although the campaign was based on the correct template, the staking requirement was mistakenly changed from £40 to £20 because of a typographical error.
They said that only one ad was affected, and it was shown exclusively in the mobile app to a targeted group of up to 3,057 customers. They explained that the promotion was only live for a short period, from 17 to 19 May 2025, reducing the likelihood of widespread exposure. They said that customers who clicked through from the banner were still presented with the full and accurate terms and conditions before opting in. In view of that, and because the error was limited to one ad, they believed that the likelihood of consumer detriment was low. Nonetheless, they have since reviewed their processes to ensure that this type of error would not occur again.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that the headline claim “Enjoy £40 on us! When you opt in and stake £20” to be interpreted by consumers as indicating that a minimum stake of £20 was sufficient to qualify for the promotion. However, we understood that the actual requirement was to stake a minimum of £40, as stated in the small print beneath the headline: “Min. £40 stake on Marble Race Live”.
We considered that the headline claim, which indicated that a minimum stake of £20 was sufficient to qualify for the promotion, was likely to mislead consumers because it did not reflect the actual terms and conditions of the promotion. We acknowledged that the small print referred to the correct staking value necessary to participate in the promotion. However, we considered that, by introducing a higher staking requirement as a qualifying condition, the qualification contradicted rather than clarified the headline claim.
Because the ad suggested that a stake over £20 was eligible for the offer, 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) and 3.9 (Qualification).
Action
The ad must not appear in the form complained of. We told In WHG (International) Ltd t/a William Hill Online to ensure that any claims made about future offers did not contradict the terms and conditions that applied to them.
