A new era is on the horizon for gambling and lottery advertisements.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising (BCAP) are finally cracking down in order to ensure better protection for those under 18 years of age. From 1 October 2022, CAP’s stricter rules will come into effect, which will require gambling and lottery advertisers needing to tailor their adverts to their adult demographic, rather than the wider audience.
This will come as tough news to many gambling businesses as it is at a time when they will be gearing up for the 2022 World Cup. However, these changes come as part of the CAP’s commitment to safeguarding young people and vulnerable audiences. Of particular note, the rules are trying to discourage gambling and lottery adds that are “likely to be of strong appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture.”
CAP’s strengthened rules will apply across the board to all media outlets including those social media platforms that are popular with young people. The new measures will require gambling advertisers to really consider the content of their adverts so as to limit the exposure to those who are under-18 from adverts that “might unduly attract their attention and influence them”.
The existing rules state that gambling ads must not be of ‘particular appeal’ to children and young people. This suggested that the ads which appeared to target young people (as opposed to adults) would be unlawful. However, the new rules differ and tighten this restriction. The ‘strong’ appeal test prohibits content such as imagery, themes and characters which have a strong level of appeal to under-18s. How the content is perceived by adults is not relevant (i.e. it may also have strong appeal to adults, but if it appeals to young people it will be unlawful).
The ASA have provided guidance in relation to the content which will be deemed to have strong appeal, and so would be unusable by gambling companies. Among the specific examples given are, high profile football players or players who are particularly popular on social media with under-18s, sports people in general who are popular with under-18s and well-known by under-18s on social media, references and gameplay of video games which are prevalent among under-18s and stars from reality TV shows which are followed closely by under-18s (this could include programmes such as Love Island which have a large 16-18 demographic).
With the FIFA World Cup now less than six months away, it is highly likely that many gambling companies have already begun the process of negotiating deals with prominent footballers to use in their ads and may already have started filming the advertisements. As the World Cup is due to commence after October when the new rules come into play, this may create excess expenses for these companies.
The impact of the new rules (including prohibition of prominent sports stars from these advertisements) may also decrease the amount of attraction to the ads by adults above the age of 18 as popular sports stars are likely to be influential to over-18s as well). This will also negatively affect the gambling companies, which may be a deliberate ploy to reduce gambling generally – in line with the review of gambling laws and proposed measures such as banning betting firms from sponsoring football shirts.
You can read more about the ASA’s tough new rules for gambling ads here and find details on the guidance, which comes into effect from 1 October 2022 here.
The changes are likely to have a significant impact on the gambling industry. We would be happy to discuss any concerns you might have about compliance with advertising rules. Please feel free to contact a member of our Commercial and Intellectual Property team.
