Paddy Power in trouble with the advertising regulator again
News on 6 Jul 2016
News on 6 Jul 2016
Online betting group Paddy Power is in trouble with the UK Advertising Standards Authority again following a number of complaints regarding its Cheltenham horse racing television advertisement in the “Fonejacker” series fronted by Kayvan Novak portrayed as a complaints line responder.
The regulator found that a claim in the advert that a Cheltenham betting promo was open to ‘everyone – even riff raff’ was misleading because the promotion was not open to all customers.
Paddy Power acknowledged that, but explained that it had blocked about 0.5 percent of its customer base from participating if they had been identified as potentially “abusing the offer or using the offer to guarantee profits regardless of the outcome”.
Despite this, the ad watchdog said that in a case where it was emphatically stated that the betting promotion was open to everyone it was not enough to have on-screen text stating “T&Cs apply”.
“Because we considered that consumers, including those who were subject to account restrictions, would infer from the ad that everyone could take up the promotion, when that was not the case, we concluded it was misleading,” said the ASA.
