UK Advertising Standards Agency steps in.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in the UK has stepped in to ban two online advertisements for Scratch Cards. The adverts in question were posted on Facebook, Yahoo and MSN by PrimeGaming the operator of Prime Scratchcards with over 1 billion hits being recorded on Yahoo alone but a dozen complaints were received by the ASA who investigated. The first advert depicted a  woman holding a baby with text saying “I am a single mom and I live on family benefits, I played and won £46,799 and it is incredible for me. I was very stressed for my son’s future and I couldn’t sleep, now that I  won I know that I can help my son build a better future”. The second advert pictured a woman holding a cheque saying that she had just been made redundant and was now going to take a holiday and pay off some debts. There was no questioning about whether the winners were genuine or not but the focus of the complaints and the findings of ASA was that the ads included testimonials from potentially vulnerable people from low income groups implying that online gambling had provided a solution to the worry about a child’s future and therefore might encourage those in a similar position to view gambling as a solution to financial difficulties. This breached the CAP (Committee of Advertising Practise) Code clauses 57.2, 57.4 (a) (b)  (c) and (d) (Gambling).

ASA told PartyGaming that the ads must not appear in their current form. The company had already reviewed the ads following complaints to ASA and admitted that that there were errors which were liable to mislead and had given instructions for the ads to be removed from all sites.