888 Ladies have fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) and had an advertisement banned from broadcast after a complaint from one viewer. The banned advert came under scrutiny after it advertised a top prize of £5million for its Golden Ticket promotion.

The viewer that complained felt that the £5million top prize being advertised was misleading as it “exaggerated the likely amount of winnings.” The odds of winning £5million were 1 in 25778699578994555700! The odds were so long for the jackpot as players would have to win the game by matching all 24 numbers on their card in 24 calls. This is clearly close to impossible and nothing like it has ever been seen in any form of bingo.

The ASA clearly agreed with the complainant as they decided to ban the advert on the grounds that it broke CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Code rules 5.1.1, 5.1.2 5.1.3 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.3 (Misleading advertising – qualification).

The idea of the Golden Ticket game from 888 Ladies is that a player would win the top prize of £5million if they matched the first 24 numbers in 24 calls. After that the prize money drops for every additional number that is drawn. At 40 balls the prize money remains at a constant £50,000 regardless of the number of additional balls drawn out.

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