OddsMonkey were reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for a misleading post which advertised claimed profits from a member using their service.
The post in question, which was seen on September 21st, 2017, was published on the OddsMonkey blog and titled ‘Ben’s Matched Betting Diary’. The text below the title of the post read:
“Welcome to my matched betting blog. I’ve decided to start the blog to give you an insight on how to make guaranteed profits through matched betting each day. I personally have an aim of £20 a day to hit my target of £600 a month, but usually exceed this. I haven’t failed to meet this target for over a year (except when I was on holiday for three weeks last July). I do make the majority of my money from sports betting offers but also do the casino and bingo offers where time allows”.
The post contained the supposed daily profits of the member along with which bets were placed to achieve those profits.
The ASA were notified of the post by the complainant who raised concerns whether or not the member was fictional and whether the profits claimed by the member were realistic and could be sustained.
OddsMonkey’s responded to the claim stating that the member was an employee of the company and that the blog post was a diary of his own matched betting profits. OddsMonkey supplied evidence to confirm the fact that ‘Ben’ was an employee and provided the ASA with figures which were used to calculate the profits claimed in the article. They also provided details of the profits & losses of 1,571 members which were obtained from data from their profit tracking tool used by some members.
After reviewing OddsMonkey’s response, the ASA upheld the complaint stating that “consumers would expect the level of success described in the diary to be typical of the success they were likely to be able to achieve when using OddsMonkey’s service” and didn’t consider the documentation which OddsMonkey provided to support that claim.
As OddsMonkey failed to supply adequate evidence to support their claim, the ASA concluded that the claim made in the ad had not been substantiated. As a result, OddsMonkey were told to remove the ad and not make claims about the amount of profit which members were likely to achieve unless they were able to provide adequate evidence to support it.
This ruling by the ASA is not the first in the matched betting industry and follows from rulings against Profit Accumulator in March of this year and Profit Maximiser in September of 2017.