ASA sanctions gambling ads
News on 29 Jan 2015
News on 29 Jan 2015
The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has sanctioned Take That Ltd for three issues surrounding the promotion of the EuroMillions and UK National Lotteries games as well as Geo24 for advertising surrounding its GeoLotto game.
The ASA received one complaint from WagerPod Ltd regarding three Take That Ltd-owned websites promoting the EuroMillions and UK National Lotteries.
WagerPod challenged the hyperlinks at the bottom of three different pages saying they gave the impression that the user would be redirected to the official site but in fact weren’t in two of the websites. The third hyperlink implied that it was the official UK National Lottery website.
The ASA upheld all three instances deeming the links as misleading. It ordered Take That Ltd to refrain from publishing the adverts again in their current format.
An advert for Geo24 UK Ltd’s GeoLotto game was also challenged this week, again by one complainant who believed that although the product was a gambling game it misleadingly implied it was a lottery.
The ASA agreed and upheld the challenge saying “Because we considered the ad implied participants would be playing a lottery, not participating in a gambling game, we concluded it was misleading”.
The ad may not appear again in its current form.
