The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against South African bookmaker Hollywoodbets.
The ad for Hollywoodbets was found to have breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 16.1, 16.3 and 16.3.13(Gambling) by featuring imagery that could appeal to young people.
The complaint pertained to a banner advertisement displayed on the Virtual Football League website, www.the-VFL.com, which is an esports statistics website for the EA Sports FC video game.
The ad contained the Hollywoodbets logo and text that stated, “UP TO £30 BACK AS FREE BETS + 20 FREE SPINS” and featured a “SIGN HERE” button. The ad also included an image of people dressed in sports clothing, featuring a footballer, a tennis player, a golfer, an American football player, and a jockey riding a horse.
The complainant, who is aged under 18 and registered for the site using their date of birth, challenged whether the ad was appropriately targeted.
In response, Hollywoodbets stated that the ad was placed on the site by its affiliate partner Playhill Ltd t/a Clever Advertising.
The affiliate explained that the site in question hosted the Virtual Football League, which has a close alignment with real-world football, and as such, the platform is closer to traditional sports where, they said, consumers were familiar with seeing gambling ads.
Clever Advertising also argued that the league’s gameplay format required team coordination, scheduling and commitment, which it believed was more typical of older and more mature players, often over-18.
Due to these factors, the affiliate believed the ad was placed appropriately.
Clever Advertising also said that it had a dedicated team which manually reviewed websites.
This team judged that placing ads on EA Sports FC-related websites was acceptable because children accounted for less than 25 per cent of the player base. The team also worked closely with publishers to block or target content, based on identified criteria.
It said the ad was approved for display on the VFL homepage, meaning it should have been visible to visitors before they logged in, but not after.
The site remarked that it did not select the ads that appeared on the site, and once it was made aware of the complaint, it contacted its partners to have the ad removed.
The ASA noted that the complainant, aged 16, had created an account for the-VFL.com, for which they had registered their date of birth.
“We acknowledged that Clever Advertising maintained that the ad was approved for display prior to user login, but understood the complainant was logged in when the ad was served to them,” the ASA said.
“Because the ad was served to a user of the website who was known to be under 18 by their registered login details, we considered that the ad was directed at those below the age of 18 through the selection of the media in which it appeared and therefore breached the Code.”
The ad must not appear again in its current form.