The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has imposed an advertising ban on the sports betting operator Coral over a promotional tweet that has been found misleading to the company’s clients.
The ban has been imposed after the regulatory watchdog found a paid-for post published by the company’s official account misleading. The decision of ASA came after two issues were investigated and only one of them was upheld.
As already mentioned above, the promoted tweet that has been found misleading was posted by the official Twitter account of Coral on April 26th, 2016. It stated that the promotional offer was especially aimed at new customers of Coral. According to the tweet’s text, new customers could get paid out at 8:1 odds when making a bet of £5 on the probability of Real Madrid beating Manchester City. The offer also stated that winnings would be paid out in free bets.
The person who filed the complaint blamed Coral that the ad was misleading to customers implying that making a bet was totally risk-free. In addition, the compliant blamed the company for not making sufficiently clear that customers’ winnings would be paid out in free bets.
As a response of the complaint, Coral Interactive said that the text of the ad was based on the belief that Real Madrid would beat Manchester City as it was considered as the favourite to win the football match, and this would result in the customer being granted with additional returns as free bets. Coral Interactive rejected the inclination that the ad suggested that making the bet was risk-free as the complainant insisted.
As of the second part of the complaint, Coral emphasized on the fact that a large yellow flag was included in the flag in order to make it perfectly clear that all winnings would be paid in the form of a free bet.
After investigating the complaint, the Advertising Standards Authority did not confirm the first part of the accusations and judged that customers were truly likely to misunderstand the promotional offer’s text and neglect the risks involved. On that point, the watchdog investigated the ad under CAP Code rules 3.1 and found out it was not breaking any rules.
On the second, point, however, the ASA found that Coral’s Tweeter ad breached the 3.1, 3.9 and 3.10 rules of the CAP Code. The regulator said that customers were likely to understand that their eventual winnings would be paid in cash instead in free bets.
The final ruling of the Advertising Standards Authority was that the ad must not appear in its current form any more. Coral Interactive was told that they need to make sure the second part of the ad is made clear to customers.
- Author
Daniel Williams
