Online casino advertisements found to target those under 18 by the ASA!

The casino and gambling industry are one of the strictest and most non-forgiving industries around. They have rules which casino providers and casinos must abide without any exceptions, and if you do not follow these rules then there are usually rather crucial consequences. What we are talking about primarily is the ASA which is the Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA is the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the UK, they are the ones who regulate the content of advertisements, sales, promotions and everything in regards to advertisement. The ASA has the right to decide whether the content is fit for the audience by compliance regulations and the standards codes. The reason why we are going on a tangent about the ASA is because NetEnt got into a little bit of trouble with them recently.

The ASA ended up finding a breach of UK rules and regulations which prohibit targeting under 18’s

The using of the new child ‘avatar’ monitoring technology helped the ASA find and identify 43 advertisements over a two week period during 2018 which were in breach of the rules. Some of the culprits were many of our well known online casinos and of course NetEnt and this was due to their Vikings video slot game. The ASA deemed this game as a breach and a target for under 18’s.

The rules throughout the casino world are so difficult to constantly monitor, and due to the fact that Vikings was such a massive tv hit this is probably why NetEnt ended up being under the ‘spotlight’ of the ASA. The managing director of NetEnt, Henrik Fagerlund spoke out about this find and said a few words about it: “NetEnt takes responsible gambling and protection of minors as a matter of utmost importance and is continually striving to ensure that our games are only advertised and offered to consumers of legal age.”

These things can very easily happen, as we noted previously in this article, keeping up with the rules and regulations for online casino which are at a constant change is very difficult, but the ASA must do their job and make sure that these sites are safe for minors. NetEnt will still continue to be the incredible casino games provider that they are, this was just a small bump in the road for them and as always the issues get resolved very quickly.