Legal View: the end of “money back” offers or a one-off?

On 3 June 2020, the ASA ruled against LC International t/a Coral in relation to its “Have Another Go” racing offer. The ASA concluded that the Coral promotion, which returned a punter’s stake as a free bet if the selected horse failed to finish, encouraged repetitive gambling and breached rule 16.3.1 of the CAP Code.

The ASA ruling may turn on the facts of this case.  Coral’s “Have Another Go” campaign was promoted with a tweet on Coral’s Twitter page. The promotion offered a stake of up to £10 back as a free bet if the chosen horse failed to finish the race.  A video accompanied the tweet showing a scene with a jockey about to fall off his horse. A man shown in the video looked disappointed until he looked at his phone and smiled when he saw he would get his stake back. A complainant challenged whether the advert was irresponsible as it encouraged repeated gambling.

Coral defended its position, stating that money back offers were recognised industry campaign mechanics and were not designed to encourage repetitive play.  Customers were not obliged to take up the free bet and were not required to deposit or stake additional funds to qualify.  Coral did not consider that the promotion applied undue pressure on customers to place another bet.

The ASA referred to its gambling advertising guidance which stated that care should be taken to avoid trivialising gambling and to avoid the impression that the decision to gamble should be taken lightly.  It considered the “Have Another Go” wording and the video where the punter’s mood was instantly lifted by the free bet gave the impression that the decision to gamble had been taken lightly.  It considered that this would encourage repetitive gambling and concluded that the advert was likely to encourage potentially harmful behaviour.

Money back offers are widely used gambling promotions and if all offers of this type were found to be irresponsible, the implications would be significant. The offers compensate punters for a losing bet allowing them to use the stake again without risk.  A losing punter is therefore persuaded by the offer to return to the site to place another bet.

In my view, these offers are no different from discount codes or cashback offers when shopping online – the intention being to keep the customer coming back to spend money. Ultimately a gambling business must be built on customers returning to gamble, which by its very nature is repetitive.  If the intention of the ASA is to restrict marketing which encourages customers to keep spending, this will have far reaching implications.

The ASA ruling is likely to hinge on the facts of this specific case, where the punter’s mood in the video was lifted by the promotional offer. Without the accompanying video, I doubt that the ASA would have ruled that the advert was socially irresponsible. Time will tell whether this ruling is fact specific or will have wider implications for these types of offer.