The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is taking down an online gambling advert for British gambling company Ladbrokes.
A promoted tweet for the operator, seen in February 2023, contained an image featuring the American social media personality and professional boxer Jake Paul. The bottom part of the tweet featured a poll containing several options, including “Head to the MMA”, “Join the WWE”, “Win the re-match”, and “Return to YouTube”.
The advertising regulatory body of the UK challenged whether the advert displayed an individual who would probably be of particular appeal to underage individuals and therefore violated the country’s gambling advertising regulations.
LC International Ltd trading as Ladbrokes responded to the accusations, saying that the advert was published on Twitter after the fight between Tommy Fury and Jake Paul. The gambling operator further noted that the promoted post featured no promotional offers, links to the Ladbrokes betting platform, or calls to action. Apart from that, the company explained that its entire feed on Twitter featured only content that was adult-appropriate and further shared that the social media platform is available only for people over the age of 18.
Ladbrokes highlighted the fact that boxing was not listed as a sport of moderate or high risk in terms of appeal to children and young people under the “Gambling and lotteries advertising: protecting under-18s” CAP guidance. The company also made sure that it carried out an assessment of the follower demographic, sponsorships and brand partnership agreements of Jake Paul before publishing the advert to assess the level of risk.
Jake Paul’s Presence in Ladbrokes Advert May Be Appealing to Children, Regulatory Body Claims
The Advertising Standards Authority investigated Ladbrokes’ promoted tweet under the CAP Code rules that require companies to make sure that their gambling products’ marketing communications are not of particular appeal to children or young people, and not to reflect youth culture or be associated with it. In this sense, such adverts must not feature people or characters who are likely to be followed by individuals under the age of 18 or who could be found appealing by children. The ASA requires advertisers to provide evidence that they had identified characters and/or persons used in marketing communications, as well as these persons’ reputations to make sure they would not target children or young people.
The Advertising Standards Authority considers boxing a sport that usually has low appeal to children and young people. Furthermore, the advertising regulator took into account that Jake Paul would be primarily known for making YouTube videos, which is also one of the major reasons for his large follower base on social media, although he turned to boxing in the last few years.
As the ASA reported, Mr Paul had more than 65 million followers. Approximately 3 million people were registered as under-18s on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok platforms separately. On Twitter, the American YouTube persona and boxer did not have any followers registered as under-18s, while the majority of his followers and subscribers on YouTube and TikTok were aged between 18 and 20, while on Instagram, the majority of his followers were registered as aged between 21 and 24.
The British advertising regulatory body also took into account the fact that Jake Paul had been displayed on the children’s TV programme Bizaardvark on the Disney Channel from 2016 to 2018. That is exactly why the watchdog believes that it was likely that Mr Paul’s presence in adverts has a strong appeal to children.
For those reasons, the Advertising Standards Authority considered that the Ladbrokes advert on Twitter violated the CAP Code rules 16.1, 16.3, and 16.3.12 related to gambling. The regulator took down the ad, saying that the British gambling company must make sure it ap
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Olivia Cole
