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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Advertising Standards Authority rule against Bet365

How many times have you read or watched an advert promoting free bets? The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has now taken action.

The ASA has pulled two press ads featured in the Racing Post for igaming site Bet365.com, after it received complaints that the ads were misleading. The complaint read that the advert did not clarify that the free bet was not free at all. In fact to get the maximum advertised free bet of £200 the punter had to part with £900 of his own money. Bet365 replied by saying that the advert stated that the offer was subject to terms and conditions.


Bet365 said that the terms were too complex to be included in the ads but were readily available on its website. It felt the magazine’s readership were an educated betting audience and would automatically understand the terms of the free bets. The ASA took noticed of the fact that consumers were required to spend £900 to obtain the full £200 of free bets, with a minimum spend of £25 to receive a bet worth £25.

The ASA considered that these conditions were very important and that if publish they would have influenced consumers’ understanding of the offer and because the information had not been included in the ads they were likely to mislead.

The ASA has ruled that the ads must not appear again in their current form. Will this revolutionise the igaming adverts?

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