The UK has launched an eight-week consultation on whether to exempt betting operators from rules which prevent them from using sports people aged under 25 to promote bets on their UK websites.
The CAP code governing advertising practices in the UK, which previously only applied to external adverts and communications produced by operators, was extended in March 2011 to include marketing communications on marketers’ own websites.
This meant that gambling operators’ websites were now subject to CAP Code rule 16.3.14, which deems that marketing communications must not:
[…] include a child or a young person. No-one who is, or seems to be under-25 years old may be featured gambling. No-one may behave in an adolescent, juvenile or loutish way.”
Industry lobby group the Remote Gambling Association however alerted the CAP (or Committees of Advertising Practice), which are responsible for drafting the UK advertising codes, to the fact that the application of this rule to gambling actually prevented “the use of images of sportsmen and women who are or seem to be under the age of 25 to illustrate a bet offered on a sports betting website where they are the subject of the bet.”
The CAP has now announced an eight-week consultation on a proposal to amend a rule in the gambling section of the CAP Code “to permit the use of images of sportsmen and women who are or seem to be under the age of 25 to illustrate a bet offered on a sports betting website.”
The CAP has therefore proposed the following amendment to be inserted under CAP Code rule 16.3.14:
“Individuals who are, or seem to be under 25 years old may be featured playing a significant role only in marketing communications that appear in a place where a bet can be placed directly through a transactional facility, for instance, a gambling operator’s own website. The individual may only be used to illustrate specific betting selections where that individual is the subject of the bet offered.
The eight-week consultation, with a two-week extension for the Christmas period, is set to run until 5pm on 8 February 2013, during which time CAP is inviting written comments and supporting evidence on the proposals.
Article written by Stephen Carter
