In Great Britain, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) watchdog has ordered the firm behind VCPoker.com to stop linking gambling with financial and sexual success.
A complaint was levied at betting house Victor Chandler, which ran a VCPoker.com advertising campaign featuring a scantily clad pouting young lady with the strapline: ‘You love sex. She loves sex. You love money. She loves money. You have money. She loves you. See how much you have in common?'
The complainant said the advert was irresponsible and in its adjudication, the ASA agreed, despite Victor Chandler's assertion that the ads merely sought to suggest that ‘everyone loves a winner’ and did not encourage excessive gambling.
Victor Chandler said that the advert had been used to promote an online poker tournament held in January of 2007 and had since been discontinued, and that it had provided copies of other gambling ads for similar tournaments that they believed showed aspirational messages, commonly used by the gambling industry to promote tournaments.
It also stated that the visual of the woman and the corresponding text was only used to gain attention and explained that it had acted responsibly by ensuring the poster was placed in the gentlemen's toilets of a licensed premises to limit the target audience to men older than 18.
However, the ASA ruled that the adverts implied that gambling would improve players' sex lives and also said the line ‘See how much you have in common’, reinforced the notion that men ‘even if socially inept, could obtain sexual success’.
These constituted a breach of CAP Code clauses 2.2 on responsible advertising and 54.3 on betting and gaming.
UK advertising rules ban the association of gambling with sexual prowess and Victor Chandler has been told not to do it again.
