Flutter has launched a scathing attack on the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), accusing the body of ‘defying common sense’ amidst intense pressure from anti- gambling campaigners.
The operator fired back at the ASA over ‘upholding its own complaint’ that a Sky Bet ad featuring Gary Neville breached advertising rules.
The ad in question was a clip of the Overlap podcast embedded within a promoted Sky Bet post on X, which the ASA said was likely to be of strong appeal to those under 18 years of age because of the presence of Neville.
This was despite Sky Bet arguing that the ad was set to target over-25s, and Neville, in his position of a retired player and now TV pundit, did not constitute a high-risk of “strong appeal” according to the guidance set out by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code.
A Flutter spokesperson told iGaming Expert: “We are now in a situation where a regulated operator is reprimanded over a tweet promoting a football show to over-25s while illegal black-market operators flood the internet and social media without any checks.”
Flutter also noted that the ASA chose to lodge a complaint against the post to itself, before upholding its own complaint, and suggested that the advertising watchdog is being put under “intense pressure” by anti-gambling campaigners.
“Not one person complained about this tweet, either to us or the ASA. This ruling defies both precedent and common sense,” added the spokesperson.
Although the ASA acknowledged that Neville’s role as a TV pundit placed him only in the “moderate risk category”, its decision to uphold the complaint hinged on the former Manchester United right back’s social media following.
Across X and Instagram, the ASA found that Neville has over 135,00 followers from accounts registered to people under-18. Exceeding the threshold of 100,000 set out in recently released guidance by the ASA.
An ASA spokesperson told iGaming Expert: “Our Guidance classes retired footballers who had moved into punditry as likely to be of “moderate risk” of strong appeal to under-18s and states that they will be assessed on the basis of their social and other media profile, as we have done in this case.
“We considered that over 135,000 social media follower accounts registered to people under-18 was a significant number in absolute terms, with the true total figure potentially higher due to the absence of data for the other social media platforms.”
Although Flutter claims the decision was made without precedent, the ASA cited a similar decision to uphold a complaint against LeoVegas in March 2024 for a radio ad featuring the former footballer Adebayo Akinfenwa.
Akinfenwa spent the majority of his playing career in the English lower leagues. However, he gained notoriety on social media due to his physique and status as the player with the highest strength stat on the football video game FIFA, leading him to gain the nickname ‘the beast’.
The ASA found that Akinfenwa had approximately 157,000 followers registered as under-18 across Snapchat and Instagram, and ordered LeoVegas to remove the ad.
