ASA upholds complaint against William Hill

Advertising Standards Authority, the regulator for advertising in the UK, has upheld a complaint relating to three advertisements on operator William Hill’s Twitter feed.

The first of the ads in question showed an image of a child jumping into the air while holding a golf ball and stated: "#TheMasters has started! #yippee.”

The second featured an image of two teddy bears wearing crowns on the back of a lorry, and the text stated: “Seen our teddy bears around London today? Send us your pics with #BOYorGIRL & you could win a Grand National Free bet.”

The third ad also featured teddy bears, which were in front of the Houses of Parliament and was tweeted to other Twitter users responses to the bears in the previous ad, with the text stating: "Definitely wearing crowns #BOYorGIRL.”

The complaint was made on the grounds that they were irresponsible, as they were likely to be of particular appeal to children.

ASA said in its assessment of the complaint that “ads (b) and (c) appeared in the few weeks before the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's second child when there was a lot of speculation about the gender of the royal baby”.

ASA, which ruled that the ads breached certain advertising codes, said: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told William Hill Betting not to use images of children or images that were likely to appeal to children or young people in future gambling ads.

“William Hill Betting said that the use of the image of a child in ad (a) and the teddy bears in ads (b) and (c) were not acceptable and had implemented procedures to ensure the issues were not repeated.”