Gary Neville falls foul of betting integrity watchdog as Sky Bet told to remove ad featuring Overlap

October 23 – Gary Neville, England’s self-appointed moral arbiter on football governance, has found himself in the middle of more controversy with a Sky Bet ad he features in falling foul of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The ASA yesterday ordered Sky Bet to remove a promotional tweet with an embedded video of The Overlap, Neville’s YouTube video series.

The ASA told Sky Bet not to publish any ads with a ‘strong appeal’ to under-18s in the future.

The Sky Bet logo was included intermittently in the video, and at the end a slogan read ‘Brought to you by Sky Bet’.

The Overlap, which features Neville interviewing footballers about their careers, has Sky Bet as a major sponsor. Flutter Entertainment, which owns the Sky Bet brand, responded by saying: “We are now in a situation where a regulated operator is reprimanded over a tweet promoting a football show to over 25s while illegal black-market operators flood the internet and social media without any checks.

“Not one person complained about this tweet, either to us or the ASA. Instead, the ASA lodged a complaint with itself and upheld its own complaint.

“We can only imagine the intense pressure the ASA is being put under by anti-gambling campaigners, but this ruling defies both precedent and common sense.”

The ASA’s ‘rule of thumb’ is that a person can be considered of strong appeal to under-18s if they have more than 100,000 social media followers registered to under-18 accounts. Neville has more than 135,000 under-18 registrations.

An ASA spokesperson explained its guidance: “Our guidance classes retired footballers who had moved into punditry as likely to be of “moderate risk” of strong appeal to under-18s and states that they will be assessed on the basis of their social and other media profile, as we have done in this case.

“The guidance also states that “a generally high social media following that attracts a significant absolute number of under-18 followers, as determined through quantitative or qualitative analysis, is likely to be considered an indicator of ‘strong’ appeal.

“We considered that over 135,000 social media follower accounts registered to people under-18 was a significant number in absolute terms, with the true total figure potentially higher due to the absence of data for the other social media platforms.”

Unusually for Neville, he has yet to make any comment or tried to justify how the ad and Sky Bet’s support of his YouTube series is good for the people of Britain. Insiders say he probably didn’t know about the ad. Convenient. Presumably he does know of Sky Bet’s sponsorship.

Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1761290504labto1761290504ofdlr1761290504owedi1761290504sni@n1761290504osloh1761290504cin.l1761290504uap1761290504