How the bingo sector responded to compliance issues in 2017

The Advertising Standards Authority cast its attention on the online gambling industry in 2017 with two notable warnings that caused UK bingo operators to scramble in a fight to ensure they were compliant with the rules.

The first warning came when several high profile operators were ruled against by the ASA for misleading adverts that were created and published by an affiliate marketer.

The rulings made explicitly clear that operators would be held accountable for actions of their affiliates, even if the operator had not explicitly approved the offending advertisements. This caused a notable level of panic within the industry as operators reviewed their affiliate set up and issued new compliance rules of their own to all of their affiliate partners.

The second warning came soon after, following an article in The Times, which accused online gambling operators of deliberately targeting children through the use of cartoon-based games and imagery. In response to The Times article, the UK Gambling Commission, ASA, CAP & RGA issued a joint letter to all UK demanding the immediate removal of any marketing that could be considered appealing to those under the age of 18.

How the bingo industry responded

By this point, Sky Bet had already announced the closure of its Affiliate Hub platform, citing ‘growing regulatory concerns’. If affiliates activity could cause them harm, simply get rid of all affiliates was their logic. Although many in the industry still believe this action was taken as a cost-cutting measure more than any attempt to be compliant.

Paddy Power Betfair were the first to contact WhichBingo at the time with their new ‘one-strike-and-you’re-out’ affiliate policy. Dozens of other affiliate platforms followed, each along similar lines and each with a similar list of requirements to ensure all marketing was up-to-date with clear T&Cs attached.

Here at WhichBingo we had already invested the time and energy in adding customisable T&C text across the site in 2016, plus we had recently made the decision to remove all banner advertising, so there was little for us to actually do when the new guidance was issued. We did however, issue our own compliance statement to reassure all our affiliate partners (www.whichbingo.co.uk/compliance/).

Particular appeal to children

When the letter was published by the UKGC, operators were told to immediately remove, or place behind a verification check, any marketing materials that may hold particular appeal to children. This caused a lot of confused panic as brands scrambled to update their websites, removing all trace of any game that could potentially fall foul of the rules.

WhichBingo received multiple requests from affiliate contacts to update our screenshots, and whilst we did so quickly and efficiently, there was a real sense of inconsistency from the requests as to what each operator had interpreted from the ruling. Some felt simply removing the cartoon elements from offending games was enough, whereas others were taking no risks whatsoever and wanted all references to particular games removed, even if the name alone sounded appealing to children.

In a webinar held in October 2017, the ASA attempted to make clearer to all what was and was not acceptable using real examples from a 2015 ruling against Bear Group Ltd. On this occasion a complaint was upheld against a TV advert and homepage design for its brand Spin Genie, which was deemed to be appealing to under 18s.

Spin Genie’s mascot at the time, a cartoon dog, was considered ‘not adult in nature’ and, given that animated animals were very common in children’s programming, the character was likely to appeal especially to children, especially in the context of the claim, “Spin will whisk you away to his magical world through levels to collect extra bonuses”.

Specific slot games were then also discussed, with a focus on those which combined cartoon style visuals with names that would sound familiar to children, such as “Jack and the Beanstalk”. Fluffy Favourites, one of the most popular slot games with bingo players, was brought up on several occasions as a prime example.

Interestingly, not all cartoon based games would fall foul of the rules. Pharaohs of Lost Fortune, for example, features a more adult animated style and theme, and according to the ASA would not be deemed as having particular appeal to children.

Several months have passed since the warning to operators and many brands have taken visible steps in regards to content that could be appealing to children. The number of slot titles, particularly free-play demo slots, that are now accessible on home pages without logging in have dropped dramatically.

Slot titles that could be deemed risky are still available at most sites, but often only to logged in (and therefore age-verified) users. Slots such as Fluffy Favourites are still used in marketing materials, but usually without any of the toy characters in the creative.

Extreme makeovers

Ignite, which operates several bright and colourful bingo sites such as Costa Bingo and Monkey Bingo, appear to have opted to remove all cartoon characters from their homepages and then hiding every other page of their sites behind the login.

Robin Hood Bingo are another brand that appears to have removed all of the cartoon characters from its site, creating new landing pages with a real actor in the role of Robin to avoid any complaints. The ‘live action’ version of Robin Hood now features on landing pages instead of the cartoon one.

Despite these notable changes, there are plenty of bingo brands that’ve made no changes whatsoever and still feature games, designs and characters that some people could consider as particularly appealing to children.

It will be interesting to see if the ASA provide any more clarity, or indeed dish out any more warnings in this regard in 2018.

Wayne Howe, WhichBingo’s head of projects

The above is an exclusive extract from WhichBingo’s Online Bingo Report, out later this week.

Main picture credit: pjrimages/iStock