A shakeup of the lucrative UK TV advertising market announced today could have a profound effect on the gambling companies that regularly advertise on commercial television in the UK.
The media watchdog, Ofcom, is investigating the way that advertising airtime is sold to companies and whether it affects competition or the consumer.
While announcing the plans yesterday, Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive, said, “The time is now right to consider whether there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the trading mechanism might be expected to prevent, restrict or distort competition in the sale of TV advertising airtime.
“We will make an assessment against this test, in which we will consider whether the trading mechanism may have a detrimental effect on consumers by virtue of its impact on competition.”
Under the current system commercial broadcasters, such as ITV, Channel 4 and Five, are allowed more advertising minutes per hour than public service broadcasters. The review will specifically look at whether this system has an effect on competition or consumers.
As far as gambling companies are concerned, it’s more a case of if you don’t have an advert on a prominent commercial channel you are the odd one out. Like going on a night out and finding out you had to wear shoes to get into a club and you’re the only one who turns up in flip-flops.
Advertising is never far from the news as far as gambling’s concerned and today’s news, although not inherently referring to the industry, comes as adverts are banned on an almost monthly basis in a trend that doesn’t look like slowing down.
