GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 41 - July 2018

a chance to win? I mean, you can’t show people on yachts and drinking champagne anymore, no, no, no, no, no. Commercials for casinos where players are seen celebrating after, maybe, a big slot jackpot pays off, or high-fiving when they roll a hard eight at the craps table? Nope, none of that. Even promotions for investment compa- nies that show clients’ portfolios should be deemed dangerous, right? Yes, you’ve seen them, the ones with green arrows going up and up and up. That’s implying some serious stuff, no? This, my fellow iGaming colleagues, is just one more slippery step toward stu- pidity. But, wait, there’s more! In late May, the ASA outdid itself again when it issued warnings against M88.com and Fun88.co.uk after receiving a com- plaint from the Campaign For Fairer Gam- bling (seriously, who are these people?) regarding advertisements that feature the likes of Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Santa Claus. The concern, of course, was that these games were going to attract and entice young children. Be- cause, you know, one of the largest target audiences for online gambling operators is young children, since they have, you know, huge amounts of disposable income. Hello?!? Anyway, because it would be difficult to enforce a £200-per-day deposit limit on all the degenerate kiddos out there, instead those ads must come down! To be fair, the ASA isn’t the only regulator or group of politicians out there making dumbfounding decisions. They have plenty of company, thanks to the likes of the U.K. GamblingCommission andU.K. Parliament members. But, since there is only so much space in this fine magazine, today we shine the shame light exclusively on the ASA. Welcome to the club, folks. It’s certainly well deserved. The iGaming world is always changing. No two days are ever the same, and that’s a primary reason why we all love what we do. But there is, however, one consistent ele- ment in this industry of ours: The ridicu- lous lengths regulators will go to in order to prove just how nonsensical they are. While examples of regulators’ boorish be- havior has been especially rampant in recent months, we’d like to take this opportunity to single out the Advertising Standards Author- ity (ASA) in the U.K. for its incredible lack of judgment back in April when it upheld a complaint against PokerStars for “breaches” to broadcast rules. Specifically, the ASA found that a PokerStars’ commercial por- trayed reckless gambling and exploited WALL OF SHAME inexperienced players by suggesting they could win easy money. Sounds pretty serious, right? What egregious act did PokerStars show in their advertising to elicit such a response? They featured a player thinking about a bluff. There must be more to it than that, you say? Oh no, that’s it. Just think- ing about bluffing in a poker game. The silly, fun commercial showed a player in a home game — not even on PokerStars — contemplating bluffing his buddies. And, that my friends, draws the wrath of a regulator as the commercial was banned into oblivion. So, that got us to thinking. What’s next? For- bidding ads for the lottery that imply you have Advertising Standards Authority Santa Claus image by Antonio Gravante/Shutterstock ID NO. 243325 DATE 30 MAY W W W . G P W A T I M E S . O R G 72