ASA rules against Ladbrokes for "irresponsible" Jake Paul tweet

[The Buzz]

The Advertising Standards Authority has taken action against Ladbrokes for a February 2023 tweet featuring YouTube influencer and boxer Jake Paul.

In its ruling, the ASA says that LC International Ltd, owner of Ladbrokes, received word from the ASA that its tweet asking users to guess Paul’s next move after his defeat to Tommy Fury “must not appear again in its current form” after being considered to have “a strong appeal” to under-18s.

The report concluded that the advertisement had breached CAP code (Edition 12) rules 16.1, 16.3 and 16.3.12 (Gambling) and advised LC International “not to include a person or character who had strong appeal to those under 18” in its marketing.

From the ruling:

Ladbrokes said, as per the CAP guidance ‘Gambling and lotteries advertising: protecting under-18s’, boxing was not listed as being of moderate or high risk in terms of appeal to under-18s. They further noted the guidance stated that boxing was an adult-oriented sport and was therefore unlikely to be of strong appeal to under-18s.

They said that prior to publishing the ad, they had assessed Jake Paul’s follower demographic, brand partnerships and sponsorships, to assess the level of risk. They considered that Jake Paul did not have a significant role in boxing or general profile within the sport and that his current partnerships were with an alcohol brand and cryptocurrency businesses.

They said the tweet was boosted and targeted at Twitter users aged 25 years and older. They said it received 16,494 impressions and of those, 47.1% were aged between 20 and 29 years.

Ladbrokes acknowledged that Jake Paul had a significant social media following. They provided details of his follower demographics on social media. On Instagram it showed that 13% of his followers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On YouTube, 16% of his subscribers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On TikTok, 18% of his followers were registered as being between 13 and 17 years old. On Twitter, 0% of his followers were registered as being under 18.

We also noted Jake Paul had featured on the children’s TV programme Bizaardvark from 2016 to 2018 on the Disney Channel, which was a programme about two teenagers. We therefore considered it was likely that the target audience for that programme would be around the same age and that therefore it was likely to have a strong appeal to under-18s.

We also considered that had the target audience watched the programme when it aired on the Disney Channel in the UK, it would be likely that some of that audience would still have been under 18 when the ad was published. Whilst the programme had ended in 2019 in the U.S, we considered that he was still well known for having appeared on that programme and that it was still available on UK streaming services. We therefore considered that Jake Paul had strong appeal to under-18s.

For those reasons, we considered that the ad was irresponsible and breached the Code.

Read the entire ruling here: https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/lc-in...ional-ltd.html