In the commercial, a woman asks her boyfriend, “Do you think I’ll end up looking like my mother?”
“I hope so,” he says, distracted by a gambling app.
The company stated that it accepted the advertising regulator’s decision and would take the advice given to it into consideration.
The advertisement, which aired in March 2022 on TV and online, depicted a man sitting in a living room with his girlfriend, using his phone to play one of the company’s betting games.
His girlfriend’s mother brings the couple a drink, and his girlfriend asks the question, to which the man responds without thinking while staring at his phone. Following his girlfriend’s puzzled look, the man returns to the betting game, embarrassed.
The narrator of the advertisement then says, “So no matter how badly you screw it up, you’ll always get another chance with Paddy Power Games.”
Viewers lodged three complaints about the advertisement, all of which were upheld. According to one complainant, the advertisement showed the man was so preoccupied with gambling that he made an “inappropriate remark.”
