Ladbrokes football ads banned for ‘strongly appealing’ to kids

Ladbrokes has been branded irresponsible for promoting gambling adverts that have a “strong appeal” to children.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation into two tweets posted by the gambling company earlier this year, featuring images of well-known football managers including Frank Lampard and Eddie Howe.

The watchdog has now ruled that Ladbrokes violated protections introduced last October, prohibiting adverts from featuring high profile figures likely to be seen as role models by children, or footage from video games popular with youngsters.

Age-verification

Although the adverts were only visible to those deemed to be over 18, ASA said that because Twitter only requires users to self-declare their age – rather than using “robust age-verification” – Ladbrokes did not achieve “the highest level of accuracy required for ads”.

The watchdog stated: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told Ladbrokes not to include people or characters who had strong appeal to those under 18 years of age in their advertising.”

Ladbrokes attempted to defend the first tweet, claiming it was only “editorial content” and did not direct users to its website where they could bet. It then tried to argue that it was unlikely to appeal to children, claiming ‘Eddie Howe has mostly managed lower level football clubs’ .

Prior to managing Newcastle United, Howe managed Bournemouth in the Premier League between 2015 and 2020 and has also been linked to the England job.

Addiction

Earlier this year, researchers from the universities of Sheffield and Glasgow found that children are more heavily influenced by gambling adverts than adults.

The academics discovered that young people and those already at risk of gambling-related harm were more likely to take up gambling and develop an addiction following exposure to advertising.

In April, the Government’s White Paper on reforming the Gambling Act 2005 stated that the Online Advertising Programme is set to explore digital advertising restrictions to better protect vulnerable people and children.