The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint made by a viewer about a TV advert by the Health Lottery which suggested that the organisation has “more winners” than the National Lottery.
In a ruling published today, the ASA said that the Health Lottery had made an unsubstantiated claim in a TV advert which ran in May 2016.
The Health Lottery said that “with over £100m handed out in prize money, there are more winners too”. The ASA said this appeared to compare the Health Lottery to the National Lottery. However the Health Lottery said it was comparing its current number of winners to those it had had in the past.
The ASA also criticised a separate part of the advert which featured a previous Health Lottery winner, who said, “Lotto has become too expensive with too many balls in the machine”.
The ASA have ruled that the advert “must not be broadcast again in its current form”. The ASA said that it also “told the Health Lottery not to imply they had more winners than Lotto”.The Health Lottery told the ASA that the “more winners” claim was a genuine one, given that in the year following the lottery’s launch it increased the number of draws it held each week from one to two.
That figure subsequently doubled to four and, in 2015, the Health Lottery said that it introduced a fifth draw.
The Health Lottery also said that the “more winners” claim “was not intended to suggest that the Health Lottery had more winners than Lotto (also known as the National Lottery)”, and that the claim was made after “further testimonial and footage of other winners”.
As such, argued the Health Lottery, “they believed the appearance of that material between the Lotto reference and the challenged claim was sufficient for viewers to draw a distinction between the two”.
Clearcast, which clears adverts for broadcast on the UK’s main commercial channels, saw no issue with the advert and supported the Health Lottery’s points.
Despite this, the ASA have ruled that the advert breached three BCAP Code rules around misleading advertising, substantiation and comparisons with identifiable competitors.
A spokesman for the Health Lottery said: “Our advert - which was fully supported by Clearcast - claimed we have ‘more winners’ given we have increased the number of The Health Lottery weekly draws, now five per week.
"Not only does this mean there are more chances to win during the week, but more money will go to local good causes as a result.
"Over the last 5 years, The Health Lottery has handed out over £105m to prize winners and over £80m to local good causes."
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