William Hill has become the latest gambling operator to have advertised “best price” claims found wanting by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ad appeared in in the Racing Post with the headline “Who’s been the best price on the favourites so far this season?”, and contained four boxes with bookmaker-branded football shirts. These showed the number of matches in played in four football leagues for which Hill’s purported to have offered “best price” compared to rival bookmakers, based on data from independent third-party source TXOdds.com.
A complainant challenged whether the claim to have been the best price on favourites so far this season and the comparisons between the bookmakers named in the ad – Coral, Bet365 and Betfair - were misleading and could be substantiated.
Hill’s said it was aware the complainant had interpreted the ad to mean it had only compared the bookies named in the ad, and told the ASA that the independent third-party data referenced in the ad had actually been taken from a wider comparison of seven operators. It also argued that the size of the industry made it impossible to compare all bookies, and had chosen to focus on the largest based on market share and NGR. It also apologised for missing data from seven matches, but provided a revised table with this included, showing Hill’s at the top.
The ASA however considered that most people reading the headline “Who’s been the best price on the favourites so far this season” would assume the comparison included all bookies, and that those named on the football shirts were those which ranked just behind Hill’s for each league. The ad regulator also noted that SkyBet was omitted from the comparison, despite having far higher NGR than others who had been included.
The ASA concluded that Hills’ data had failed to support an apparent claim to offer the best prices on the favourites across the whole market, or even just among the named bookmakers. It ruled the ad was therefore misleading and must not appear again in its current form
A Betfair ad claiming to offer the best prices on horse races 30 minutes before the off was also banned by the ASA last week for misleading punters.
Article written by Katy Stirland
