As if winning on sports betting wasn’t challenging enough, it’s even tougher when the promised odds don’t actually exist.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a TV ad by the mobile betting app Kwiff after the company misled consumers about the odds it was offering on a football match. Kwiff has also been cautioned that, in the future, they must “ensure that they accurately describe any example bets displayed in their ads, and displayed the correct odds for that bet.”
Shady Supercharged Bets?
A pair of punters filed a complaint with the ASA after seeing the commercial. The ad laid out Kwiff’s approach of randomly boosting or “supercharging” the betting odds on an event by as much as 2000 times. While there is no issue with the unique selling point itself, the complainants took exception to a particular claim made in the ad about a specific match involving Paris St. Germain.
The ad stated: “You’re placing a bet with normal odds, and suddenly your odds might get supercharged … Like Adam from Clitheroe. He placed a bet on PSG to beat Celtic and got his odds supercharged from 11/8 to 80/1.”
That claim was even reiterated in the ad’s accompanying text. The problem is that Kwiff, a brand owned by Eaton Gate Gaming Ltd, never actually offered odds of 11/8 to its customers. In reality, those odds were available for a different bet, where PSG must win and only one or no team scores.
Kwiff claimed that they broadcast a “simplified version” of that wager in its ad. But the ASA called that hogwash, stating that viewers were likely to see the ad and conclude that the bet was available to consumers without the additional qualification of only one or no team scoring.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” the ASA stated. “We told Kwiff to ensure that they accurately described any example bets displayed in their ads, and displayed the correct odds for that bet.”
Operators of the mobile app are promising to be “clean and fair” in future ads and have already pulled the TV spot in question.
Gambling Adverts in Spotlight
The mobile app is just the latest to get its knuckles rapped by the advertising watchdog. In April, the ASA banned a TV ad by PokerStars for suggesting that reckless bluffing in poker games can lead to financial gains for amateur players.
It’s no coincidence that the ASA banned the two ads in close succession, as the UK is lately putting such adverts under the microscope. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) is a sister organization which recently laid out a new set of standards for the industry following numerous grievances against certain shady promotional offers.
The ASA and CAP have the authority to pull the pull the licence for any broadcasters that “persistently run ads that fall foul of the Broadcast Advertising Code.”
