Sports betting exchange Betfair has knuckles rapped by ASA

Betfair Have had their wrists slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after receiving a complaint from Straight Statistics – a pressure group created to ‘expose the distortion and misuse of statistical information and identify those responsible’ – which challenged the facts presented in a poster campaign for Betfair. The posters for the betting exchange were created to advertise Betfair’s own ‘starting price’ (BSP) which they believe gave sports bettors’ better odds than the starting price (SP) given by the industry,  Betfair quoted a 40% better chance of a win using BSP compared to the high street SP, which Straight Statistics believed was misleading and that the sports book could not substantiate.

Betfair in breach of ASA codes?

Betfair were asked by the Advertising Standards Authority to supply information to support the information published on the posters and after careful analysis by the ASA the case was upheld and Betfair have been ordered not to publish the information again in its present form as the ads breached CAP code clauses 3.1 Substantiation, 7.1 Truthfulness and 19.1 other comparisons. Although the ASA did acknowledge that after analysing 17,000 races Betfair had data available to prove that around 2,000 had benefited from a 40% BSP when compared to the industry SP they also noted that 3,000 BSP were the same or worse than the industry SP, 12,000 showed a BSP that was 20% better or less than the SP.

Good but not that good!

The conclusion is that on the surface rates are statistically higher using the BSP although they were not to the degree stated in the 40% BSP posters and therefore they were ‘skewed due to the influence of winners with very long odds, which tended to have a disproportionately higher difference between BSP and SP’. Betfair state they did not guarantee that ‘customers would, in every case, receive returns at BSP which were at least 40% better than those available from the industry SP’. Betfair also believe that punters using the BSP would be fully aware that the figure quoted was an and that sometimes they would benefit from higher returns using the BSP and at other times it would be less than 40% quoted in the Betfair posters.

For full details of the complaint made by the Straight Statistics pressure group, full breakdown of the adjudication and the assessment that the ASA made in the Betfair case, follow the link to the Advertising Standards Authority website.