ASA Rules Ladbrokes Ad Included an Individual Who was Likely to be of Strong Appeal to Under-18s

Ad description

A promoted tweet for Ladbrokes, seen February 2023, contained an image that featured Jake Paul. The caption stated, “[boxing glove emoji] @TommyTNTFury beat @JakePaul by split decision last night. So, we’ve got to ask the question… What’s next for Jake Paul? Vote here now [downward pointing finger emoji]”.

At the bottom of the tweet was a poll, which contained the options “Win the re-match”, “Head to the MMA”, “Return to YouTube”, and “Join the WWE”.

Issue

The ASA challenged whether the ad included an individual who was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s, and therefore breached the Code.

Response

LC International Ltd t/a Ladbrokes said the ad was published after the fight between Jake Paul and Tommy Fury and that there were no calls to action, promotional offers or links back to the Ladbrokes site.

They said their Twitter feed and respective tweets were age-gated and could not be accessed by users unless Twitter had accepted their age as being over 18.

Ladbrokes said, as per the CAP guidance ‘Gambling and lotteries advertising: protecting under-18s’, boxing was not listed as being of moderate or high risk in terms of appeal to under-18s. They further noted the guidance stated that boxing was an adult-oriented sport and was therefore unlikely to be of strong appeal to under-18s.

They said that prior to publishing the ad, they had assessed Jake Paul’s follower demographic, brand partnerships and sponsorships, to assess the level of risk. They considered that Jake Paul did not have a significant role in boxing or general profile within the sport and that his current partnerships were with an alcohol brand and cryptocurrency businesses.

They said the tweet was boosted and targeted at Twitter users aged 25 years and older. They said it received 16,494 impressions and of those, 47.1% were aged between 20 and 29 years.

Ladbrokes acknowledged that Jake Paul had a significant social media following. They provided details of his follower demographics on social media. On Instagram it showed that 13% of his followers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On YouTube, 16% of his subscribers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On TikTok, 18% of his followers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On Twitter, 0% of his followers were registered as being under 18.

Assessment

Upheld

The CAP Code stated that marketing communications for gambling products must not be likely to be of strong appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture. They must not include a person or character whose example was likely to be followed by those aged under 18 years or who had strong appeal to those aged under 18. The ASA expected advertisers to provide evidence that they had identified what persons or characters were generally known for outside the context of an ad, and had used appropriate sources of data and information to assess their likely level of appeal to under-18s. Because the ad had appeared in a medium where under-18s could not be entirely excluded from the audience it needed to comply with that rule.

CAP guidance stated that sportspeople involved in clearly adult-oriented sports who were ‘notable’ stars with significant social media and general profiles which made them well-known to under-18s was considered moderate risk in terms of how likely they were to be of strong appeal to under-18s.

We considered that boxing was an adult-oriented sport and one that had low appeal to under-18s. We also considered that Jake Paul would primarily be known for making YouTube videos and that he had a large social media following. We acknowledged that he had within the last few years turned to boxing. However, because of his career on YouTube, we considered that he had a high profile within the sport and was well known outside of the sport and social media.Across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, Jake Paul had over 65 million followers. On YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, around 3 million people were registered as under 18 on each of those platforms. We noted Jake Paul did not have any followers on Twitter who were registered as being under 18, and this had been where the ad was published. We also considered that on YouTube and TikTok, the majority of his subscribers and followers were aged between 18 and 20 and on Instagram the majority of his followers were aged between 21 and 24. We noted the CAP Guidance stated that a sportsperson who was involved in a sport that had a limited following among under-18s, but was particularly well known for their social media activity and media profile, in particular through involvement in youth culture-related areas, such as fashion or music, would be more likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s, and we considered that because Jake Paul had such large numbers of followers that were under 18, he was of inherent strong appeal to under-18s.

We also noted Jake Paul had featured on the children’s TV programme Bizaardvark from 2016 to 2018 on the Disney Channel, which was a programme about two teenagers. We therefore considered it was likely that the target audience for that programme would be around the same age and that therefore it was likely to have a strong appeal to under-18s. We also considered that had the target audience watched the programme when it aired on the Disney Channel in the UK, it would be likely that some of that audience would still have been under 18 when the ad was published. Whilst the programme had ended in 2019 in the U.S, we considered that he was still well known for having appeared on that programme and that it was still available on UK streaming services. We therefore considered that Jake Paul had strong appeal to under-18s.

For those reasons, we considered that the ad was irresponsible and breached the Code.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 16.1, 16.3 and 16.3.12 (Gambling).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told LC International Ltd t/a Ladbrokes not to include a person or character who had strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.