How are betting and gaming operators faring in responsible marketing practice?

30.09.2011, WG: EGBA Newsletter Issue 9: Online safety and ethics

Oliver Gray, Director General, European Advertising Standards Alliance 1. What does the European Advertising Standards Alliance do? The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) brings together national advertising self-regulatory organisations (SROs) and organisations representing the advertising industry in Europe and beyond. It is the single authoritative voice on advertising selfregulation issues, and promotes high ethical standards in commercial communications. EASA does so by publishing best practice recommendations and guidelines to ensure effective self-regulation, while being mindful of national differences of culture, legal and commercial practice.

2. How is online gambling covered in the advertising rules and how does it fare in terms of complaints? The gambling sector is not a new area for advertising SROs. While some may have specific provisions in place for advertising of gambling products and services, all SROs cover advertising for on and offline gambling through rules on protection of minors, misleading advertising, offensive advertising, gender portrayal, and digital marketing communications. This is why it is vital for online gambling operators to know the relevant codes and contact national SROs to ensure that marketing campaigns contain legal, decent, honest and truthful advertising.

SRO juries will independently adjudicate on received complaints to determine if an ad breaches the codes and what action to take. The number of complaints is not necessarily proportionate to the number of upheld decisions. The Advertising Standards Authority (UK), for example, received 1,313 complaints for a Paddy Power ad (the second most complained about UK TV ad that year) and on the basis of the rules did not uphold complaints. Thus far in 2011 the ASA has upheld 40 complaints related to 7 different ads. In Spain, despite there only being 3 cases related to gambling ads, the Spanish SRO (Autocontrol) upheld all of them.

EASA also manages a cross-border complaints mechanism. Between 1992 and 2011, EASA SROs handled 2,318 cross-border complaints, 421 of which were related to gambling and lotteries. A large number of these complaints related to bogus competitions and lotteries by unlicensed, unregulated operators attempting to defraud vulnerable consumers. Up until 2009 this represented the product category with the second highest number of cross-border complaints.

3. Is advertising self-regulation simply an alternative to national and EU-level legislation? As reflected in our response to the recent EU Green Paper on online gambling, rather than an alternative, advertising self-regulation is complementary to legislation. We firmly believe that advertising selfregulation should be considered as a viable policy option, in conjunction with EU legislation, in the field of commercial communications as an effective means to ensure consumer protection.

4. How has the online gambling industry reacted to the growing influence of self- regulatory advertising codes? We are encouraged by EGBA's willingness to raise ad standards across the sector and work closer with EASA.

A number of players in the online gambling industry, however, still see their advertising campaigns stopped by selfregulatory organisations for irresponsible marketing communications. One big UK operator, for example, had three ad campaigns ruled against by ASA, the UK SRO, this year alone. Such adjudications can prove costly for gambling operators since they usually enforce the removal of ads and damage a company's reputation. We recommend that online gambling operators, before launching new advertising campaigns: a) ensure they are compliant with national advertising self- regulatory codes, as well as relevant national and EU law, in countries where they wish to advertise and b) seek copy advice from national SROs via EASA's copy advice link: www.ad-advice.org.

For more information about your SRO, reports and statistics and other EASA activities, visit: www.easa-alliance.org.

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