UK watchdog warns William Hill over ad

Meanwhile, Ladbrokes Coral has been cleared over the location of a digital billboard.

UK.- The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has found fault with a William Hill ad but quashed a complaint against Ladbrokes Coral. In the first case, the watchdog received a complaint over a paid-for search ad for a welcome bonus that failed to prominently display payment restrictions.

The small print on the linked website clarified that certain payment methods, including Apple Pay, were exempt from the promotion. The complainant said this was a significant condition that should have been clearly flagged in the advert. William Hill argued that such restrictions are common and that there is limited space available in ads to include all the conditions of a promotion. The use of Skrill, PayPal, Paysafe and Neteller was also not permitted. However, the ASA ruled that the omission of this information meant that the ad was likely to mislead consumers.

“That text was not linked to the relevant text in the ‘key terms’ section further down the page. It was therefore not clear where that information could be found,” the ASA said. It ordered William Hill not to show the advert again in its current form.

A separate ruling saw the ASA take the side of Ladbrokes Coral after a complaint over the location of a mobile digital billboard close to two schools. The ad promoting Coral for the Cheltenham Festival showed a man like he was attending a horse race looking through binoculars and was placed on a parked van in Cheltenham.

Coral argued that it had followed ASA rules by ensuring that the eight vans used for the campaign were not parked within 100m of a school, although it recognised that due to the mobile format of the “digivan” and issues with parking spaces, it could at times have been within 200m of schools. It said screens were positioned facing race-going traffic before the start of racing, and repositioned as attendees left.

The ASA found that there was no direct line of sight from primary schools to the vans’ locations and estimated that it was unlikely people under 18 would constitute more than 25 per cent of the audience. 

“Because the digivans had not been parked within 100m of a school and with no direct line of sight, and because the displays were only activated after 9am, and remained 200m away from sensitive locations where possible, we considered that appropriate steps had been taken to comply with the relevant media placement restrictions,” the ASA concluded.

UK competition watchdog could force Spreadex to sell Sporting Index assets

Earlier this week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it was considering possible remedies after finding “provisional competition concerns” with the merger of Spreadex and Sporting Index. The CMA ruled that the merger with Sporting Index eliminated the only licensed competition, which could lead to a decline in user experience, more limited products and/or higher prices for consumers. It says potential remedies could include a requirement for Spreadex to sell some or all of the Sporting Index assets it acquired.