Ladbrokes ad banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has banned a TV ad and a Video on Demand ad for Ladbrokes’ rewards program after ruling that the term ‘Ladbucks’ was likely to appeal to people under the age of 18.

The TV ad, seen on 17 December 17, featured a voice-over that stated: “This is a Ladbuck, the new way to get rewarded at Ladbrokes, and these are some of the 100 million Ladbucks that will be dropping weekly. Collect them from our free to play games and choose rewards like free spins, free bets and more. Over 100 million Ladbucks dropping every single week. Plus, you can even use them to play your favorite games for free in our Ladbucks arcade. Like Fishin Frenzy and Goldstrike. Start collecting at Ladbrokes.com”. The ad also featured imagery of coins that displayed the initials ‘LB’ as well as a text that stated “100m Ladbuck”, “Free Bets” and “Free Spins”. The VOD ad, seen on Channel 4 On demand on 23 December 2024, was the same.

Following complaints, Ladbrokes argued that both ads promoted ‘Ladbucks’, which was their rewards programme, that could only be used by logged-in, verified over-18 consumers and that these tokens could not be purchased, had no monetary value and expired if not used. Ladbrokes also explained that ‘Ladbucks’ did not have a general market value with an exchange rate, and they could not be universally used across all products on the Ladbrokes site. They said each eligible product or offer had a set value, which was in contrast to in-game currency products. The company also stated, amongst other things, that the term ‘Ladbucks’ was not associated with any coins from videogames which were popular with under-18s. Ladbrokes said many other industries used reward schemes for consumers and the concept was not unique to video games which were popular with under-18s. They also said that as a licensed gambling operator that offered casino and poker products, using imagery of a ‘poker chip’ should not be considered imagery that was of strong appeal to under-18s. Therefore, they believed there was nothing in the imagery or the content of the ads that shared similarities with either of those games.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority concluded that the name ‘Ladbucks’, when considered alongside the imagery and the application of the coin in the ads, was depicted in a manner which was similar to features in video games popular with children and therefore considered the term in the ads was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s and breached the Code. The Authority this decided that the ads could not appear again in their current form.