Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and LeoVegas Gaming plc t/a Bet MGM
Where: United Kingdom
When: 20 March 2024
Law stated as at: 21 May 2024
What happened:
A television advert for LeoVegas Gaming featured comedian Chris Rock as a brand ambassador. The advert included imagery of him on a boat and imagery from Las Vegas, including the Bellagio fountain. In addition, his voice featured heavily in the advert.
Three complainants challenged whether Chris Rock was likely to be of strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.
Chris Rock is predominantly known as an adult-orientated stand-up comedian. However, he has also held roles in content that is oriented towards children, most notably the “Madagascar” animated films released between 2005 and 2014. In addition, he appeared recently in the film “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie”, albeit with a limited role. Chris Rock is also well known for the slapping incident with Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars ceremony.
LeoVegas stated that, when it was assessing Chris Rock’s suitability for the campaign, it had performed a full risk assessment to ensure that he would not be likely to have a strong appeal to children or young people.
In relation to the Madagascar films, LeoVegas argued that, because a significant amount of time had passed since their release (and the associated promotional materials), any audience members that would have been impacted by promotion of the film release would now be over 18 years of age.
Chris Rock’s appearance in the Paw Patrol film, although very recent, was minimal; he said 15 words and was only included for five seconds in a 95-minute film.
In terms of social media, Chris Rock is mainly active on two social media platforms where he has 11.7 million followers globally. On one of the platforms, only 0.5% of his 6.3 million followers were registered as under 18 and, on another platform, where he has 5.4 million followers, only 0.1% were registered as under 18. These figures are global: it was not possible to break the number of under 18s down on a territory-by-territory basis. However, estimates were made as to the number of UK followers who were under 18; these estimates amounted to 508 followers on one platform and 567 followers on another one.
ASA findings
The ASA found that, because a significant degree of time had passed since the Madagascar films, any promotional material associated with the franchise linking Chris Rock with the role would not be relevant to those who are currently under 18 years of age;
Chris Rock’s appearance in the Paw Patrol film was found to be not sufficiently prominent or significant to render him of strong appeal to under 18s, while the estimated numbers of UK followers on social media were found to be not significant in absolute terms.
Also, the advert showed Chris Rock in a tuxedo with a life jacket, with an orchestra playing a song by a band that had become popular in the 1980s and imagery from Las Vegas. This meant the advert was not presented in a way that would have strongly attracted the attention of under 18s or was likely to render the advert, or Chris Rock, of strong appeal to under 18s.
The ASA found that the advert was not of strong appeal to children.
Why this matters:
This ruling shows that if an individual appears in content that appeals to children, if enough time has elapsed since the appearance or if the appearance is fleeting enough, then the individual will not fall foul of the rules on appeal to children and gambling adverts. This ruling gives another example of forensic analysis of social media followers and the importance of the number of absolute followers who are under the age of 18.
Piya Kher assisted in the drafting of this article
