Gambling is a highly regulated industry and its advertising is no exception. It is likely that this regulatory scrutiny will only increase, with the newly-elected Labour government committing to reforming gambling regulation by strengthening protections and ensuring responsible gambling. As such, this decision by the Advertising Standards Authority ("ASA") caught some by surprise as LC International Ltd ("Coral") was found not to be in breach of the CAP Code for displaying gambling ads near schools. So what does this ruling tell us about how the ASA investigates gambling ads? 

The ad 

The ad was a mobile digital billboard ("digivan"), seen in March 2024 in Cheltenham during the Cheltenham Festival horse racing meeting. 

An investigation was launched following a single complaint which challenged whether the ads were responsibly placed, because the digitavans were allegedly parked close to two schools. 

coral ads

Galloping to victory

Coral said that they carry out such campaign every year and in doing so, exceed ASA's recommendations around promoted age-restricted services. The ASA recommends that no such ads are placed within 100metres of a school, and Coral instructed the digivan drivers to double that figure so they remained 200m away from schools to the extent practical. While Coral accepted, however, that the mobile format of the ads, combined with issues such as potentially limited parking spaces, meant that the digivans could sometimes be within 200 metres of a school. Coral's media partners confirmed that the digivans had been parked over 100 metres from, and not in direct line of sight of, a local primary school. Similarly, drivers were instructed not to activate their screens until 9am, when children would have already entered their schools.  

The regulator assessed the locations of the digivans provided by Coral, which correlated with the location provided in the complaint. The morning locations taken up by the digivans were over 800 metres from a secondary school, and even though they were approximately 150-metres from a primary school, there was no direct line of sight from the primary school grounds to the digivan’s locations. As such, the ASA found that no breach of the CAP Code had occurred.