GVC Holdings recently came out 1-1 in battles against UK ad regulators regarding the content of some of their advertisements. The stories of these two fights speak volumes about the power anti-gambling forces have over government regulators, as well as the lengths gambling operators must go to to defend some pretty innocuous content.
In the first case, the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that GVC Holdings subsidiary Ladbrokes was not guilty of prioritizing gambling in everyday life in an a recent ad. The ad in question depicted such shocking scenes as a man filling up his gas tank and stopping at £77.77. The ASA rightly concluded that the notion that this somehow suggested someone prioritizing gambling over everyday activities like, uh, filling up the gas tank was absurd. They even went so far as to say, “the characters were depicted as momentarily reminded of gambling and engaged in that analogy of the situation, they were not so distracted that they didn’t continue with those tasks.” So there.
Another GVC Holdings subsidiary, Coral, didn’t fair quite so well with their contested ad. The ad in question offered a free wager on horse races if the player’s horse lost a race. In the complaint, it was suggested that this somehow promoted compulsive wagering. Coral pointed out that players were in no way obligated to take the free wager, but the ASA was unmoved and chided the ad makers for promoting “repetitive participation”.
The idea that some poor GVC Holdings employees have to spend part of their professional lives to comb through the minutiae of advertising to prove that an ad about a man filling his gas tank isn’t part of a more sinister plot to break his soul, is heart breaking.