A little know pressure group calling itself Straight Statistics, challenged whether a claim made by Betfair, that the returns available to gamblers taking Betfair’s own Starting Price (BSP) were on average 40% better than those available to gamblers taking the industry SP, could be substantiated.
Betfair sent a spreadsheet to the Advertising Standards Authority, which compared the BSP to the industry SP for every winning horse (just over 17,000) since the launch of the BSP. They stated that, based on a £10 stake at the BSP, a gambler would have been £460,817 better off than were he to have taken the industry SP;  that figure equated to the BSP being 41% better than the industry SP and the claim was based on that figure.
The ASA countered;
“We noted Betfair’s data demonstrated that a significant majority of winners had a significantly lower difference between BSP and the industry SP. Around 3000 of the total 17,000 races had a BSP either the same or worse than the industry SP and around 12,000 had a BSP that was only 20% better or less, while around only 2000 had a BSP that was 40% better or more. We considered that the basic average figure used by Betfair was skewed due to the influence of winners with very long odds, which tended to have a disproportionately higher difference between BSP and SP. Because we considered that Betfair had not shown that the average figure they used was typically representative of the difference between the BSP and SP, we considered that the claim was likely to mislead.”
It was found that the ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 and it was ruled that it should not be run again in its current form.
Niall O’Connor (this article was first posted on the UK’s leading betting website BettingMarket.Com)
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UPDATE:
BetFair has been ordered to drop starting price ad.
Misleading BetFair ads are now banned in the UK.
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Advertising Standards Authority (ASA):
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted Betfair’s argument that the claim “40% BETTER SP…” would be understood by consumers as a factual statement of the average difference between the BSP and industry SP. We noted the comparison of SP and BSP odds for winning horses sent by Betfair and acknowledged that it demonstrated the accuracy of the average difference between the two. However, we noted the ad stated “40% BETTER SP” and was not qualified in any way and considered that consumers were likely to infer that such a figure was typical of what they could expect when betting at the BSP, although we acknowledged that consumers were unlikely to expect that to be the case in all instances.
We noted Betfair’s data demonstrated that a significant majority of winners had a significantly lower difference between BSP and the industry SP. Around 3000 of the total 17,000 races had a BSP either the same or worse than the industry SP and around 12,000 had a BSP that was only 20% better or less, while around only 2000 had a BSP that was 40% better or more. We considered that the basic average figure used by Betfair was skewed due to the influence of winners with very long odds, which tended to have a disproportionately higher difference between BSP and SP. Because we considered that Betfair had not shown that the average figure they used was typically representative of the difference between the BSP and SP, we considered that the claim was likely to mislead.
The ads breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 (Other comparisons).
Action
The ads must not appear again in their current form.
