On 26 October 2022, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that Lottoland breached the CAP Code by misleading the public with three ads. The three ads were investigated by the ASA, and the complainant’s arguments were upheld in all cases.
The Adverts
Two of the adverts (a and b below) concerned betting products where consumers chose numbers to be drawn in an official lottery draw with Lottoland matching the prize of the official lottery, so that consumers were effectively betting on the outcome of the official lottery draw, but not participating in it. The third advert (c below) referred to a random number generated lottery run by Lottoland.
a. the “Bing Ad” stated, “Lottoland Irish Lottery – Only £2 Here” and “£209m US Powerball Lotto. £56m Megamillions 6for1. Contact us. Play here”. Lottoland stated that the ads had been generated automatically, and that due to a default setting, the ads were sourced using a combination of (often unrelated) words from various online sources. This process had meant that their usual additional clarifications about the “betting” element had not been published.
b. the “First Google Ad” stated, “Lottoland Irish Lottery – only £2 Here” and “Charity Combo for £2. Win-win charity Lotto + BRC Scratch 50% off. Support UK Charities Here”. This ad was a Responsive Search Ad (“RSA”). RSAs adapt to show more relevant messages to customers by automatically testing different combinations and learning which combinations perform best. Lottoland stated that it had made updates to their ‘pinned terms’ with Google to ensure that its ads referred to “betting”. However, the Google algorithm had not used its pinned terms in some rare instances because of a word count and space issue.
c. the “Second Google Ad” stated “Lottoland Lotto x5 – Just £1 – 5 chances to win £1 million” and “CAN Your Lotto Do That? Lottoland Can”. Lottoland explained that this was an expanded text ad and that the algorithm Google used had omitted some of its key words. It assured the ASA that Lotto x5 referred to a product it had developed, where numbers were drawn by a Random Number Generator and did not correspond to any official lottery draw.
The complainant, who understood the purpose of the games (to bet on the outcome of a lottery rather than participate in the lottery itself), still challenged that the ads were misleading.
Lottoland contended that the “Lottoland” brand had been represented in all three ads and that ‘Irish Lotto’ was a known shorthand term for lottery betting products. It argued that the ads had not referred to the “Irish National Lottery” and customers could therefore not reasonably believe that they were taking part in a national lottery. As such, the ads were not misleading.
The ASA Ruling
The ASA noted its appreciation that the ads related to services where consumers could bet on the result of lottery draws. However, it held that in the absence of any further qualification, consumers could interpret the terms ‘Lotto’, ‘US Powerball Lotto’ and ‘Irish Lottery’ to mean a lottery, and that Lottoland was offering an opportunity to purchase tickets for official lottery draws. Additionally, that the First Google Ad had referred to charitable causes was likely to reinforce the impression that the service being offered was a lottery, as consumers tend to associate official lotteries with charitable efforts.
As such, the three Lottoland ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).
The ASA ruled that the ads must not appear again in their current form. Additionally, Lottoland were instructed to ensure that their adverts do not mislead the public by overlooking the purpose of the service, which is to offer the public the chance to bet on the outcome of a lottery, rather than participate in one. Lottoland have been asked to make any references to betting in their ads clear and prominent. Lottoland assured the ASA that the issues leading to the production of the misleading ads had been resolved with Bing and Google.
Co-authored by Alexander Bouchier, Trainee Solicitor.
Social Media cookies collect information about you sharing information from our website via social media tools, or analytics to understand your browsing between social media tools or our Social Media campaigns and our own websites. We do this to optimise the mix of channels to provide you with our content. Details concerning the tools in use are in our privacy policy.