Flutter Entertainment has criticised the challenges of marketing betting products in the UK in the aftermath of a Sky Bet promotional tweet featuring retired footballer Gary Neville being criticised by the country’s advertising watchdog.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) revealed yesterday that it had ordered Sky Bet to remove a tweet with an embedded video of The Overlap, a YouTube video series in which the former Manchester United and England player interviews other footballers.

The ruling does seem to indicate a confusing marketing landscape for British bookmakers. This is because previous ASA rulings have permitted operators to use retired footballers in their marketing, including Sky Bet and former Manchester City defender Micah Richards.

Flutter has also pointed out that The Overlap’s target audience is adults, and it has to be said that the show’s content, focusing largely on footballer’s reflections on their careers, probably wouldn’t resonate too well with many under-18s.

A Flutter spokesperson remarked: “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.

“Not one person complained about this tweet, either to us or the ASA. Instead, the ASA lodged a complaint with itself and upheld its own complaint.

“We can only imagine the intense pressure the ASA is being put under by anti-gambling campaigners, but this ruling defies both precedent and common sense.”

The presence of offshore and unlicensed operators in the UK gaming market has become more and more apparent in recent years, having been acknowledged by various stakeholders including the DCMS, UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) and Gamstop, among others.

There is also a lot of concern about how these unlicensed operators market themselves, with affiliate platforms promoting non-Gamstop casinos. It’s also not uncommon to see offshore companies which hold UKGC-licences, often through white label deals, partner with Premier League football clubs despite not having an active British domain.

For companies like Flutter, it seems advertising in the UK is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t – don’t advertise you risk being outmatched by your competition and impacting channelisation from the black market.

But if you do advertise, you risk public criticism around the overexposure of gambling, particularly in sports, and risk regulatory repercussions for breaching the various requirements of the CAP Code.

ASA makes its case

The CAP Code has been routinely updated with regards to gambling advertising over the past few years. The main caveat operators need to adhere to is that marketing cannot be seen as having a strong appeal to under-18s.

This includes the use of prominent sports figures who have a young following – a category that apparently includes Gary Neville, who hasn’t played professionally since 2011. For a while, it seemed therefore that retired footballers were fair game, but a new requirement that individuals with over 100,000 social media followers aged under 18 has changed the game.

Speaking to iGaming Expert, an ASA spokesperson explained its guidance: “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.

“The guidance also states that “a generally high social media following that attracts a significant absolute number of under-18 followers, as determined through quantitative or qualitative analysis, is likely to be considered an indicator of ‘strong’ appeal.

“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.”

The ASA’s ‘rule of thumb’ is that a person can be considered of strong appeal to under-18s if they have more than 100,000 social media followers registered to under-18 accounts – though someone can still be considered to be of influence if they don’t have this many followers.

For example, a 21-year old footballer for say, Arsenal, with 70,000 followers could be considered as having strong appeal to young people because of their age and club following.

A 50-year old pundit like Gary Neville with 135,000 under-18 social media followers is also considered to have appeal to young people because of social media presence, coupled with his job as a Premier League pundit for Sky Sports.

Another thing for bookmakers to consider is what is classed as an ‘adult-centric sport’, described by the ASA as “sports in which there is no evidence of significant participation or viewership amongst under-18s”.

Formula One does not seem to fit into this bracket, if yesterday’s ruling against Kwiff’s Lewis Hamilton social media post is anything to go by – in total there were three ASA rulings yesterday, against Sky Bet, Kwiff and Betway.

Boxing may be considered an adult-centric sport, with a bet365 social media post featuring Chris Eubank greenlit two years ago seeming to indicate this. However, could a boxer like Anthony Joshua, who has a huge social media following, still be considered as having strong appeal to young people because of this?

In short, advertising is a tricky discipline as ever for operators. Not everything is black and white, and there are now more considerations for what a firm can and can’t include in its marketing strategy than ever before.