Online bingo provider, Littlewoods Bingo, recently had to fight for their right to have their new advertisement aired on television. The new ad campaign had one complaint against it which caused the Advertising Standards Authority to take a look at the advertisements.

The complaint made to the Advertising Standards Authority stated that the ad was encouraging irresponsible gambling because it indicated that players could win big multiple times on the website. The complaint was filed against St Minver Ltd, the company who runs Littlewoods Bingo.

The Advertising Standards Authority viewed the ads and commented on their content: “A TV ad promoted Littlewoods online Bingo. The ad showed animated bingo balls moving against a green background intercut with shots of two women at computer screens chatting to each other via the Littlewoods bingo chat room. The voice-over stated “Littlewoods football pools has brought billions to millions, now we bring you bingo. Come and join the fun … Littlewoods
Bingo is the name you can trust to pay out big style, with hundreds of winners and tens of thousands in prizes every single day. You can even chat and gossip in our big mate’s chat room … “. The shot cut to a woman in front of a computer screen. Text on the computer screen stated “Leanne: What did you just win??? Kate: £500 … again X”.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled the complaint to be dismissed as Clearcast did not believe the ad was misleading because the St Minver Ltd company supported the claims made for the amount of payouts and number of payouts.

The company stated that the ad was created to show how much could be won each day and did not consider the text would mislead players to think they could win multiple times.

So because of the ruling Littlewoods Bingo will be allowed to continue to run their ad campaign. This is the second instance in a very short time period where a bingo operator was investigated on their ad campaigns. It seems as though many are watching and holding the operators accountable for their content.


- 2009-01-19