ASA reprimands William Hill over misleading ad while Coral escapes punishment

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has reprimanded William Hill after the operator was deemed to have omitted significant information from its ads displaying a welcome offer.  

The digital ads in question, which ran in April, showed the promo of betting £10 and receiving a £60 welcome bonus in return.

Search engine Bing’s version of the ad stated: “Bet £10 Get £60 Welcome Bonus”, while the version that appeared on the William Hill site read: “New Customer Offer. Get £60 From A Minimum £10 Bet” followed by a “Join Here” button. 

A complaint arose because the promotion didn’t apply to customers depositing with Apple Pay, a condition not displayed prominently on one ad and not at all on the other.   

While the operator’s own ad did include the stipulation in small print further down the page, the Bing version included no such disclaimer.  

William Hill argued the payment method restriction was a way to stop customers taking advantage of the offer multiple times, despite the fact that it is only intended for new customers to use once.  

The company also stated that in the past certain ewallet payment methods, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, had “limitations in matching ownership of that payment method with the registered gambling account owner at the beginning of the customer journey”.

This, it was argued, increased the risk of people taking up an offer, intended for new customers only, multiple times.

Hills added that of the 3,383 customers who took up the offer after clicking the links, only 97 people deposited using “excluded payments, such as Apple Pay”.

The operator also suggested that the Bing ad was significantly limited in space, which meant some information had to be omitted, and that it clicked through to a landing page with all the necessary information. 

Regarding its website ad, William Hill claimed the necessary terms and conditions were adequately displayed, even including a “Payment methods & country restrictions apply. Full T&Cs apply” disclaimer. 

However, the ASA upheld the complaint against William Hill and ruled that the ads must not appear again in their current form.  

An ASA statement read: “Ad (a) (the Bing ad) contained no information regarding certain payment methods being excluded from the offer.  

“Although the ad contained a link through to ad (b) (the website ad), which did contain information about the excluded payment methods, the code required that significant conditions must be stated in all marketing communications referring to promotions where the omission of that information was likely to mislead consumers.  

“We considered the ad was not sufficiently limited by space to justify the omission of that significant condition.” 

Regarding the William Hill’s website ad, the ASA added: “We considered that the text “Payment methods […] restrictions apply” at the top of ad (b) did not make sufficiently clear to consumers that if they deposited funds using certain payment methods including Apple Pay, they would not receive the £60 welcome bonus.  

“That text was not linked to the relevant text in the ‘key terms’ section further down the page, and it was therefore not clear where that information could be found; consumers would have been required to read all the small print under the ‘how to take part’ heading and some under the ‘key terms’ heading to locate that information.  

“We considered that because the excluded payments information was a significant condition of the promotion, although it was not omitted entirely from ad (b), its position meant that it was easy for consumers to overlook it and was therefore insufficiently prominent.” 

Elsewhere, the ASA did not uphold a complaint against Coral over its use of mobile digital billboard advertising.  

The operator had ads promoting the Cheltenham Festival this March mounted on a parked van, which people had complained was situated too close to two schools.  

Coral acknowledged that there was a chance the ads could come within 200 metres of a school as they were being driven around Cheltenham in order to be put into position.  

To mitigate this, the Entain-owned operator made sure that the ads would only be live from 9am to 5pm when children would be in school. 

During racing, the ‘digivans’ drove around the town centre and near the entrance to the racecourse.

After racing had concluded, the vans parked facing the direction of travel of people making their way to the town centre or station from the racecourse.

The ASA said: “While we acknowledged that children may have seen the ad, we considered it unlikely that people under 18 comprised more than 25% of the audience.  

“Because the digivans had not been parked within 100 metres of a school and with no direct line of sight, and because the displays were only activated after 9am, and remained 200 metres away from sensitive locations where possible, we considered that appropriate steps had been taken to comply with the relevant media placement restrictions.” 

Earlier this month, the ASA upheld a complaint against Geoff Banks Online, the digital arm of on-course bookmaker Geoff Banks, which was deemed to have omitted significant conditions from its welcome offer for the Grand National.