ASA Bans Two 888 Ladies Bingo Ads
Earlier this year 888 Ladies Bingo run a golden ticket TV advertising campaign, where £5 million pounds was up for grabs. Two online bingo adverts in relation to this offer have just been banned by the ASA – (Advertising Standards Authority) for being misleading after just the one complaint was made by a viewer.
Although £5m was on the bingo table to be won at 888 Ladies Bingo in their golden ticket game, it was only actually guaranteed to payout £50,000………..still a very nice sum of cash, but this is where the (misleading) bit come into play.
To win the £5 million you would need to have won the full house within 24 calls or less, after this the prize money on offer would start to drop down and would continue to fall until it reached the guaranteed £50k mark. So although it was possible to win £5m when the golden ticket game was played……………..it was extremely unlikely and that’s putting it mildly.
In one of the 10 second golden ticket adverts from 888 Ladies Bingo, it dictated a lady in her bedroom shouting “I won” whilst jumping up and down. The voice-over said “Simply play bingo and you could win loads of golden tickets to our massive £5-million game. Only at 888ladies.com”.
Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd t/a 888ladies.com (Cassava), were obviously going to stand up against the one complaint. They said – “the ads did not make any claims about a guaranteed maximum cash prize but concentrated on the games golden ticket entry mechanism. They said 30 golden tickets were allocated daily to new and existing players on the 888ladies bingo website and those ticket holders were awarded free entry to the £5-million 24-ball-game. They argued that the ad related to the free entry to the game through this ticket allocation and not to an amount that was guaranteed to be won in the final game.”
The ASA of course took all this into consideration and noted many facts about the adverts, however they upheld the complaint, so the golden tickets ads cannot now be shown again on TV in their current form. However, I don’t think 888 Ladies Bingo are going to be that bothered, as their golden ticket game has now finished.
