The Advertising Standards Authority published a ruling against Ladbrokes Betting & Gaming Ltd, banning one of its ads.
The Authority ruled against the gambling and betting company after a complaint of a promotional e-mail received by customers on July 19th. The e-mail featured a promotional offer with a subject line that urged customers not to miss the exclusive Free Bet Offer. Below, the e-mail’s body offered more information about the promotion.
Under the terms of the advert, in order to get the free bet mentioned above, the customers were required to place a wager of at least £10 on any football event. In return to that, players got a free bet of £10. However, the complainant said that the e-mail ad was misleading as they were not able to place their free bet due to the fact that they turn out to be not eligible for the promotion.
Ladbrokes, of course, responded to the accusations and revealed that the stakes of the person who filed the complaint were restricted two days before receiving the ad. This meant they were ineligible to take advantage of the promotional offers provided by Ladbrokes from that moment onwards. In addition, the UK-based betting company claimed that the complainant was sent an account message earlier on July 19th and was informed that they could not benefit from promotions any more.
Of course, Ladbrokes provided a copy of their record of the account message to the complainant. The company also added that there could be a time lag for the systems to be updated and the relevant information to be displayed to customers. The promotional seemed to be sent over the time lag exactly, which made the customer unable to receive the information, while the promotional offer was sent to them by mistake.
As the complainant has received the promotional e-mail offer and the latter was addressed directly to them, the Advertising Standards Authority said that could have been misleading, no matter that a system message was sent to the player to inform them they were no longer eligible to take advantage in such promotions. The regulatory watchdog upheld the complaint and said that the e-mail ad breached CAP Code rules 3.1, 8.1 and 8.2 concerning Misleading advertising and Promotional marketing, respectively.
The Advertising Standards Commission ruled that the advert should not be displayed in the misleading form any more and made a recommendation to Ladbrokes to make sure their promotional marketing materials are not sent to customers who are no longer eligible to benefit from them.
- Author
Daniel Williams
