ASA censures Ladbrokes over four promoted Australian Open tweets

Ladbrokes has been found to have once again violated the CAP code by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after a series of tweets centred around the Australian Open 2023 were deemed “irresponsible” by the watchdog. 

The ASA’s Active Ad Monitoring system picked up the promoted tweets which contained images of four prominent tennis players: Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas. 

The tweets in question were posted between January and February 2023 and were focused around the first tennis major of the year, with the initial post occurring during the quarter-final stage of the tournament, with the first of the tweets polling which players would make the semi-finals.

The post was accompanied by an image of four tennis players, including Djokovic, and a list of four matches. The text on the image said: “Aus Open 2023 – men’s quarters.”

The second tweet asked users to predict who they thought would win the tournament with another poll attached to the tweet. Djokovic, Nadal and Kyrgios all featured in this post.

Following Djokovic’s record-breaking 27th consecutive match win at the Australian Open, Ladbrokes posted a tweet celebrating the Serb’s milestone with text that stated: “History maker. Novak Djokovic’s 27th consecutive win at the #AusOpen is the longest men’s singles winning streak in the Open Era. The legendary Serb has not lost a game in Melbourne since 2018. Are you backing him for a fourth-straight #AO2023 title?”

There was a picture of the tennis star with text which said: “Unbeaten at Melbourne Park since 2018. 27 consecutive Australian Open wins.”

The last tweet focused on Djokovic’s win at the tournament with images and text celebrating his fourth straight Australian Open title. 

The ASA challenged whether these tweets held appeal to under-18s and therefore broke the CAP code.

Ladbrokes argued that the four tweets were intended as editorial content designed to engage its audience. Two of the tweets focused on Djokovic’s impressive Australian Open run, and the others were polls asking users tennis-related questions during the tournament. 

The operator also said that it had done its due diligence around the players featured in tweets, including their follower demographics, brand partnerships and whether they would have strong appeal to under-18s. 

Ladbrokes claimed that the players’ brand deals had little appeal to under-18s. For example, Djokovic partnered with Peugeot, Hublot and ANZ Banking.

The operator also targeted the tweets at those over the age of 25 and said that the data showed the impressions for all four of the posts varied between 24,653 and 35,050, with only one impression in the 18-24-year-old bracket, with the bookmaker believing that the one impression to be an anomaly and has asked X, formerly known as Twitter, to clarify. 

Ladbrokes also provided data which showed the stars’ followings on the platform were predominantly over the age of 21.

In response to these arguments, the ASA stated that the four players used were considered high risk within the CAP guidance.

Its reasoning related to the fact that Djokovic and Nadal had been at the top of the tennis rankings for over a decade, and Kyrgios and Tsitsipas reached a number of grand slam finals in recent years, garnering media attention. Therefore, the players would have held an appeal to under-18s. 

The watchdog did acknowledge the operator’s argument that the deals and social media followings of the players were mainly over 25, but because X uses a self-age verification process, these figures cannot be fully verified. 

For these reasons, the ASA concluded that the tweets were irresponsible and breached the CAP code and, as a result, cannot be used in its current form. Ladbrokes was instructed not to include a person or character who had a strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.

This is the third time in two months that Ladbrokes has been censured by the ASA after tweets involving Jake Paul and Premier League managers last month.