What are the New Guidelines for Advertisements on Online Gaming?
The ASCI wants advertisements for fantasy sports to come with disclaimers. Why?
Whether it’s “Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully”, which is read out quicker than Shankar Mahadevan singing Breathless or the “Smoking is harmful/ Dhumrapan Sehat ke liye haanikaarak hota hai” warnings, Indian television watchers are no strangers to advertising disclosures.
These flow from a simple idea. The government tries to protect consumers from taking decisions which could cause a material harm to them. While there are is an argument to be made for such disclosures to exist in a bunch of other fields (like soft drinks), regulators have largely refrained from doing so.
Until recently, that is.
Regulating Ads for Online Gaming
Just last week, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (‘MIB’) issued a consultation mandating that TV broadcasters and publishers comply with the guidelines issued by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on ads related to fantasy sports, online gaming and related forms of advertising.
What prompted this? The fact that these ads took over our televisions, especially during the Indian Premier League. Whether it was Dada challenging you to beat his team on My11Circle or half the Indian team playing gully cricket as a part of a Dream 11 ad campaign, odds are that you would have seen these ads.
Turns out, the MIB saw them too.
This prompted them to take action. For one, the MIB felt that kids may get influenced easily without understanding the downside involved in such games. Secondly, there was also a concern that the risks of playing fantasy sports with real money were not highlighted for the general public.
This resulted in the new guidelines.
The Guidelines
For one, ads in the print and static medium need to have the following disclaimer: “This game involves an element of financial risk and may be addictive. Please play responsibly and at your own risk.” There are also requirements on the size of this disclaimer, to ensure that the print isn’t too fine.
The disclaimer for audio-visual ads is also the same. The difference is that the guidelines mandate that the disclaimer: (a) has to be in the same language as the ad; and (b) must be at a normal spoken pace (to avoid the Shankar Mahadevan comparisons, presumably).
Here are a few of the other interesting requirements that caught our eye –
(a) no ad can depict a person of less than 18 years to be shown as playing or winning;
(b) the ads should not suggest playing fantasy sports as a profession or an employment option; and,
(c) the ads should not imply that a person engaged in gaming activity is in any way more successful as compared to others.
What Next?
With the India-Australia test series starting soon, we don’t expect these ads to stop anytime soon.
However, it’s clear that fantasy gaming companies will need to tweak their campaigns to build-in these disclaimers. Will this impact the number of players on these apps? That’s tough to answer. There are entire studies dedicated to analysing whether warnings are effective in deterring activities like smoking.
While the new disclaimers will definitely inform people of the risks involved in online gaming, whether they will change user behaviour needs to be seen.
Stay WorldWise!