Yet another tough call to all UK Licensed casino operators from the UK Gambling commission. This time, it will be all the advertising content that, somehow, attract children under 18 with their fancy and famous child-attracting looking characters.
All casino operators are being urged to remove their "irresponsible provision" of children oriented casino advertisement from their websites including all affiliates which are promoting their casino using similar advertising.
A letter to all UK gambling operators was sent and published last Friday, coming from all parties involved within the gambling regulatory body in the UK, namely the Uk Gambling Commission, Committee of Advertising Practice, Advertising Standards Authority and the Remote Gambling Association.
This enforcement is being put forward after some recent investigation carried out by the Sunday Times recently about how iGaming companies are branding and advertising games with child oriented content and characters. Such adverts and characters include the likes of Jack & The Beanstalk and Peter Pan together with various other childish-looking fantasy characters that look like they are coming straight out of a children animated cartoon movie.
All operators are urgently being urged to remove "any freely accessible adverts" as the letter states within. All the UK licensed operators together with their affiliates, will have to make sure that all the related ads are removed from their websites.
The letter also stated that in case of failure to adhere to the enforcement, a hefty fine will be imposed on the operator, and it's not going to be a light one. We all remember that BGO was recently fined over £300,000 for misleading advertisement on their website and for not preventing their affiliates in promoting such misleading content.
If there is any doubt whether any content falls into the irregular advertisement category, operators are urged to discuss its content with a Copy Advise Team, which is a division from the Committee of Advertising Practice.
After giving some thought about the above, one must endorse the enforcement from UKGC in protecting our children from online gambling, however, I truly believe that this priority should be given from parents and guardians at any point in time during our children's life when it's possible. I also just hope that online gaming does not get to a state where we will only have dots, numbers and lines on our screens. Online gaming is all about games in the end.
