Anyone in the gambling industry understands that the act of placing a wager can only really be described as a form of entertainment. Placing bets should never seriously be thought of as a potential career. For muddling that message, Profit Accumulator has received a warning from the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Profit Accumulator, who offer match-betting information for a subscription fee, posted two ads that were worth of the warning. On March 22, 2019, they posted to Instagram an image of a customer winning with the hashtags “#makemoney #makingmoney #income #makemoneyfromhome #extraincome #students #sahm #extramoney”. Then on April 11, 2019, another post to The Gram had this caption: “In 1 month I have gone from a person struggling to stay afloat who is worrying about their MOT, bills etc to completely flipping my financial position. Could not have got to this position without match betting and without the guidance of Profit Accumulator”. It also had hashtags that suggesting betting was working from home.
In defense of the ads, Profit Accumulator argued “the purpose of their service was to assist members by taking advantage of free bets and promotions by bookmakers to bet on all outcomes of a potential bet, and therefore ensure profit, amongst other exploitable loopholes.” They also noted that the win in their post was from a customer, and that signing up for their service and following it correctly would nearly guarantee profits for a customer. They admitted though that “they did not consider that the hashtags suggested that the product was an alternative to full-time employment.”
That last part is hard to swallow, considering they used the hash tags #workingfromhome #workingfromhomejobs #workingfromhome in their second post.
While the ASA was willing to accept much of Profit Accumulator’s defense, they upheld the warning for each post. They noted that they could not conclude that use of the service would significantly change anyone’s overall financial status, and added:
“We considered that the hashtags combined with the image of a large sum of money implied that Profit Accumulator’s service could be an alternative to employment or a way to achieve financial security. Although matched betting was not itself gambling, because its purpose was to facilitate gambling, we considered that this was irresponsible.”
That seems fair. While the ASA has gone after some pretty tame ads in the past, their vigilance has made a significant effort, with fewer children seeing gambling ads overall. Spanking a service for implying they had a working get rich quick scheme is good for the U.K., and good for the gambling industry too.
