The Advertising Standards Authority ruled in favour of BetVictor, one of the leading independent gaming and bookmaking companies in a global scale, in a case filed by one complainant who claimed one of the TV adverts of the brand was misleading.
The BetVictor ad seen by the complainant in October 2016 on TV featured two men at a horse race, with one of them wondering why he should use the “lengthen the odds thing” and the other offering him to hear what a real professor of probability has to say about that. Then, a third man was displayed in a classroom, stating that the odds were not very good as probability and form suggested that it was very likely that favourite would win. However, he said he could predict the number of lengths it was going to win by, which would increase the odds. At this time, the professor was displayed using the BetVictor application, with on-screen text suggesting to players to lengthen the odds and boost their winnings.
The individual who filed the complaint said that the claim that probability and form suggested that the race’s favourite would win the competition was misleading to customers and they could provide evidence to prove that.
Of course, the Gibraltar-based gaming and betting company responded to the accusations, stating that its advert simply suggested that the odds for the favourite horse to win were always shorter than the ones for the other participants in the race. The advert was aimed to promoting the “Lengthen the Odds” application of BetVictor and the way it worked in order to increase customer’s odds if used when the player picked a favourite horse. What is more, the company further explained that the advert was not intended to exaggerate the capability of the brand’s “Lengthen the Odds” application and that was not the company’s suggestion in any way, ever.
The Advertising Standards Authority investigated and assessed the case, understanding that the text of the TV advert made the complainant believe that the bookmaker implied that the favourite horse in any given race would win. However, the ASA considered that customers who have seen the ad and would use the application would understand that the text was not a broader claim and it was set in the context of the ad only.
In this sense, the Authority did not believe that the ad did not imply what the complainant suggested, so it ruled in favour of BetVictor, saying that the ad was not misleading. The case was investigated under BCAP Code rules 3.1 about Misleading advertising, 3.9 regarding Substantiation and 3.12 related to Exaggeration, but there was no evidence the advert in question breached any of these rules, so no further actions were necessary.
- Author
Daniel Williams
