Full Tilt faces Virgin F1 team ad restrictions
Full Tilt will not be able to use full branding on the Virgin F1 cars it has recently sponsored throughout the F1 world tour due to legal restrictions on egaming advertising in some host countries.
FULL Tilt will not be able to use full branding on the Virgin F1 cars it has recently sponsored throughout the F1 world tour.
Legal restrictions on advertising online gambling in some territories mean that Full Tilt is publicising its sponsorship of Virgin Racing as being with its Full Tilt Poker.net ‘poker school’, despite the URL of its play-money site being omitted from the branding on the cars.
At the recent Grand Prix in Monaco, however, dot net advertising was used.
Tom Lippiett, an associate at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said: “The use of specific dot net signage in Monaco suggests that Virgin will tailor the branding depending on the territory. I would anticipate that if they are adopting a case-by-case approach to risk, they will run the dot net branding in the majority of races”.
The dot net branding also appears on the uniforms of drivers Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi.
However, last year Italy introduced restrictions on advertising dot net poker sites on the basis that they help channel players to real money sites, so even this type of advertising may encounter problems.
Full branding is legal in the UK, while territories including Spain are “grey” in that full branding is used despite legal restrictions.
However, “even allowing for the argument that it’s an ad for the dot net site, use of the full branding is likely to amount to a technical offence in almost all the countries in which the races are held,” Lippiett warned.