ASA Maintains Strict Gambling Ad Control with Two New Rulings

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) continues its mission to protect UK consumers from potentially harmful marketing. The gambling sector has often drawn the media watchdog’s ire, sometimes resulting in substantial fines and punishments. Two new rulings reveal the ASA’s most recent investigations and its evolving relationship with gambling operators. An AI-Generated Ad Raised Alarms In a recent report, the ASA revealed two of its newest rulings. The first case targets Dribble Media Ltd, the entity behind popular gambling operator Midnite. The ASA’s Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to detect potentially problematic ads, flagged a TikTok promotion for Midnite, seen on 3 July 2026, leading to a more detailed investigation. Dribble’s problematic ad showed a man using a gambling app on his phone, theorizing how many free bets he could get with just a GBP 10 investment. However, the ASA noticed that the person in the ad appeared to be under 25, which is strictly prohibited under the UK’s code on gambling advertising. Dribble claimed they had not sanctioned the ad and traced it to Limay Media, an affiliate of theirs. Limay, meanwhile, noted that the problematic video was AI-generated and the man was a fictional character meant to depict an adult. The company apologized for the misstep and stressed that it had implemented additional safeguards for AI-generated content to prevent similar incidents. Not All Reports End with Punishments Despite the mitigating circumstances involved in this case, the ASA determined that the original prompt behind the video did not specify the person’s age and did not include the necessary age restrictions. The generated person also looked like someone in his late teens or early twenties. The ASA found Dribble and Limay in violation of marketing regulations but let them off with a warning to tighten their oversight. We had no evidence that, when generating the character, AI had been prompted to ensure that the character appeared to be aged 25 or over. ASA statement This is not the first case where Midnite has found itself in hot water with the ASA. In August, the watchdog took action against an advertising campaign that appeared to use gambling to escape everyday frustrations. Despite pushback from Midnite, the ASA maintained that the ads encouraged socially unacceptable behavior and barred the operator from offering the ad in the same form. Despite the ASA’s strictness, it does not always crack down on reported ads. The authority recently dismissed a complaint against three potentially inappropriate e-sports ads by White Hat Gaming. However, the ASA examined the context in which they appeared and concluded that they had not been directed at under-18s. With more cases under consideration, the authority must deal with an increasingly complex marketing environment.