According to yesterday’s published adjudication, the Advertising Standards Authority has labelled a magazine ad by Prime Table Games UK as being untruthful and breaching the CAP code. Readers of the magazine were asked to join an anti-FOBT campaign ‘Terminate the Terminals’, a policy change that could benefit Prime Table Games, and were likely to infer that the ad was a call for support by a lobby group or non-governmental organisation seeking to ban terminals from betting shops.

The ASA noted readers could find out more information about the identity of the advertiser from the website. However, since it was not clear from the ad that Prime Table was the advertiser, it concluded that it could mislead and thereby breach the CAP Code for truthfulness. The CAP Code on substantiation was also held to have been breached when claims made in the ad, likely to be interpreted as factual statements, were not supported by sound documentary evidence.

The All Party Betting and Gaming Committee (APBGC) challenged whether the ad was misleading, because it did not make clear the identity of the advertisers. The ASA upheld the APBGC complaint that the ad assertion: "Games on betting shop gambling terminals are wholly unfair when compared to their casino equivalents" because "The probability that players lose all their available cash on a session is higher" was misleading as games on fixed odds betting terminals operated on a random basis through use of a Random Number Generator (RNG). The RNG would not know on what the player had placed a bet and it could not influence the outcome; the games could not therefore be described as unfair.

Prime Table Games (Prime Table) said the government was encouraging gambling providers to help address problem gambling; this was their response to that campaign. They added that they did not benefit commercially from it and it was therefore similar to a non-profit or charitable campaign. However, the ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form and told Prime Table Games to ensure that future ads clearly identified them as the advertiser. It also told them not to repeat their unsubstantiated claims and advised that they contact the CAP Copy Advice team for guidance with the wording of future ads.
(E-08.27.09)

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