The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a series of promotional tweets from Ladbrokes due to their “strong appeal” to under-18s.
The gambling giant published four promotional tweets earlier this year, with playful sports-related questions accompanied by various emojis and a poll where Twitter users could vote for the player they thought would win.
Additional tweets by the gambling firm also included images of prominent tennis players, such as Rafael Nadal, Nick Kyrgios, Stefanos Tsitsipas and the Australian Open men’s champion, Novak Djokovic.
Using its Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to ‘proactively’ search for online ads that might break advertising code, the ASA identified the gambling tweets as “likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s”.
In response, Ladbrokes claimed the tweets were intended to be “editorial content designed to engage with [the] audience”, acknowledging the tweets included imagery of prominent players.
It claimed it had reviewed each player’s media profile, follower demographic and sponsorship partnerships to assess whether the players would be likely to strongly appeal to under-18s.
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Ladbrokes data indicated that hardly any of its followers, especially on Twitter, were below the age of 21. In addition, the gambling brand claimed it had attempted to mitigate the dangers from the social media platform’s self-verification system by targeting its ads to only each the over-25s.
Ladbrokes’ data also showed that the impressions for all four ads varied between 24,653 and 35,050, with only one impression in the 18-24 age bracket.
Despite this, the ASA concluded that the tennis players were prominent sportspeople who were likely to have a strong appeal to “children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture”.
The watchdog said the ads were “irresponsible” and ordered Ladbrokes not to include people or characters with strong appeal to those under 18 years of age in its advertising.
The latest ASA ruling follows previous warnings to Ladbrokes over further tweets appealing to minors.
Earlier this year the firm was investigated over two tweets relating to the Premier League, while last year it released videos of prominent Premier League players Philippe Coutinho, Jesse Lingard and Kalidou Koulibal, alongside the brand’s logos.
