New rules implemented by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) have started to take effect in the UK after Camelot removed two games from the National Lottery online portfolio.
As reported by The Mirror, two of the National Lottery’s instant game products, Monopoly and Scrabble, have been withdrawn in order to comply with CAP regulations and to protect children from gambling advertising.
The stringent set of new advertising rules were announced in April, with an emphasis on shielding under-18 audiences from the gambling culture.
Under the new measures, gambling and lottery advertisements must not “be likely to be of strong appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture”.
The new directive came into effect on October 1 and, just weeks later, Camelot has removed part of its instant win portfolio.
A Camelot spokesperson said: “You must be over the age of 18 to register for a National Lottery online account – so no one under the age of 18 can play online Instant Win Games (IWGs) – and it’s widely recognised that the inherent risk of problem play associated with National Lottery products is very low.
“However, as a responsible operator, we’ve been reviewing our advertising over a number of months in line with the new CAP Code rules, which we knew were coming into force.
“As a result, we’ve removed – or not extended the licensing for – games such as Monopoly and Scrabble, and, for example, modified the artwork on our £300,000 Fruity Bingo and Winter Wonderlines IWGs.
“The artwork changes involved removing the images of fruit from the £300k Fruity Bingo game and removing some of the symbols.“
