The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has released an advice note setting out guidelines for gambling companies who wish to advertise during eSports events. It focuses in particular on social media and ensuring that adverts are not targeted towards under-18s, either deliberately or inadvertently.
Companies and brand ambassadors should be clear in separating advertising content from regular social media content, and this advertising content will ideally be behind a conditional access mechanism: automated warnings that can simply be ignored by users are not sufficient.
The guidelines are, in principle, similar to those already in place for more traditional media platforms and gambling companies should ensure that their marketing strategy is up to speed to meet them.
It is as important to target responsibly ads for gambling on eSports on social media as it is when marketing gambling on traditional sports in any other media.