The advertising practices of Midnite have once again come under the scrutiny of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Dribble Media Ltd, which trades as Midnite, was rebuked in September for a post containing Trent Alexander-Arnold. This time, it is their use of the former Tottenham Hotspur star Son Heung-min which has come under the spotlight.
In both cases, the ASA has upheld complaints that featuring footballers like Son and Alexander-Arnold in its posts would make them “likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s”.
Notably, complaints regarding the two posts have emerged from researchers at the University of Bristol, which is home to a hub for gambling harms research.
The latest ruling centres on an X post by Midnite on 23 May, which featured a video of Son holding the Europa League trophy and was captioned “How bro starts acting after winning £8.10 from a 30p 8 fold acca bet”.
Although acknowledging that Son could be considered at ‘high risk’ of holding strong appeal to under-18s due to his status as a well-known active footballer, Midnite argued that the ad was editorial in nature and not designed to drive traffic to their platform or encourage engagement with any gambling-related products or services.
Therefore, Midnite did not consider the post to be marketing communication.
However, as with the post containing Alexander-Arnold, the ASA ruled that the post constituted advertising and, therefore, fell under the scope of the CAP code.
The ruling stated: “The post was published following Tottenham’s 1-0 win over Manchester in the final of the Europa League, which was a high-profile game that attracted significant media attention.
“We understood that Midnite offered bets on football matches. The post also included a direct reference to an accumulator, which was a type of betting slip. It also included a reference to winning money on a bet.
“We considered the purpose of the post was to promote the brand through creating a viral video, and that it had featured a direct reference to gambling. It was therefore directly connected with the supply of betting services and was an ad falling within the scope of the CAP Code.”
X’s age controls under the microscope
As with similar rulings involving Midnite and Sky Bet, the ASA also called into question the effectiveness of X’s age control mechanisms.
Despite acknowledging that X has protections in place to prevent under-18s viewing content from gambling companies, it relies on users self-verifying their age upon sign-up.
The advertising body cited research from Ofcom that found 32% of eight to 17-year-olds with at least one social media account had a registered user age of 18 or above.
Therefore, the ASA considered it likely that a significant number of children who had not used their real date of birth when signing up to X could see and be promoted to content from verified gambling accounts.
As a result of these considerations, the ASA ruled that the ad breached CAP Code rules 16.1, 16.3 and 16.3.1.2, and ordered that the ad must not appear again in the form complained of.
It has also told Midnite not to include persons or characters who have a strong appeal to those under 18 in future communications.
