UK ad regulators hit Betway for Declan Rice video

When Betway, a UK gambling operator, produced a YouTube prank video starring West Ham footballer Declan Rice they thought they were seizing the spirit of contemporary advertising. After all, millions of people love prank videos and millions more love football.
After all, when you put a boot on Rice’s Range Rover and have Westham Captain Mark Noble directing the phony cop who’s wielding the boot, you’ve got comedy gold. So what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, for the content producers at Betway, Rice was quite funny but quite underage for a person who’s promoting gambling on an advertisement of any kind. Rice, you see, was only 20-years-old when the video was shot back in October. And in the complaint-happy world of the United Kingdom, someone was bound to take up the matter with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and that’s exactly what happened.
Betway defended the ad saying that it wasn’t really an advertisement in the first place. In their eyes, the YouTube video constituted “editorial content”, which is not regulated by the ASA. Company officials also argued that the video in question didn’t feature any specific call out for gambling products or make any mention of odds at all.
As might be expected, the ASA wasn’t buying any part of those arguments. They pointed out that video contained the Betway slogan “Heed Your Hunch”, as well as a Gamble Aware warning, which they argue, “…encouraged consumers to think about placing a bet.”
“For those reasons we considered the YouTube video was directly connected with the supply of Betway’s services and was therefore within the remit of the CAP Code.”
There’s no word on what, if any, sanctions Betway will face for the misguided content.