The UK’s advertising watchdog has spanked online lottery betting operator Lottoland for misrepresenting the size of its potential US lottery payouts.
On Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint filed against the Lottoland.co.uk website for its July 2017 promotion of a “PowerBall £169 million” jackpot. The complainant felt the ad was misleading due to the jackpot’s value being contingent on whether the prize was paid in a lump-sum or by installments.
Lottoland defended its promo, saying that the options for taking either a lump-sum payment or a 30-year annuity, as well as the difference in ultimate monetary value, were clearly specified in the site’s FAQ and T&C’s.
The ASA acknowledged that the FAQ did indicate that Lottoland replicated the official US lottery payout rules, including the 38% tax provision, the fact that the lump sum represented 60% of the total annuity payout, as well as the rule about splitting the potential payout should the official PowerBall prize be divvied up among multiple winners.
However, the ASA held that consumers were likely to assume from Lottoland’s big-type ad that the value indicated was what they stood to collect if they matched the right PowerBall numbers. As such, Lottoland’s promo was misleading because it quoted a prize value “that would never be paid.” Lottoland was ordered to be more upfront about its payout system in future ads.
The ASA also took exception to a SlottyVegas.com online promo that claimed “our games pay more.” SlottyVegas’ parent company NRR Entertainment claimed the statement was based on its Supercharged Wins feature that added extra funds to each winning round, thereby providing a higher payout than if the feature wasn’t applied.
The ASA wasn’t buying it, saying consumers were led to believe that they’d receive a higher payout from the games on the SlottyVegas site than from games on a rival operator’s site. The ASA found that SlottyVegas had provided no evidence to support this belief, making the promo misleading.
As if to prove that they’re not entirely joyless scolds, the ASA declined to uphold a complaint against a William Hill television spot promoting the company’s Bet Boost odds enhancer. The ad, which appeared in December 2017, featured a smartphone displaying odds for football matches scheduled for six months later. The complainant suggested these odds were misleading.
Hills defended the ad, saying that, while the odds displayed were roughly comparable to what the company were likely to offer on those matches, only a proper tool would presume these odds to be there for anything other than illustrative purposes. And the ASA, in its infinite wisdom, agreed.
Showing posts with label Powerball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Powerball. Show all posts
January 14, 2016
Winning Powerball Tickets Sold in at Least 3 States for Nearly $1.6B Jackpot
The winning Powerball numbers were drawn Wednesday night: 8, 27, 34, 4, 19 and the Powerball of 10.
California lotto officials tweeted almost immediately after that a winning ticket was sold in the state. Later, California Lottery spokesperson Russ Lopez said there were two more winning tickets sold, one in Tennessee and one in Florida.
The California Lottery also tweeted that it sold 12 tickets that matched five of the six numbers.
California lottery officials said the winning ticket was sold at the 7-Eleven on Chino Hills Parkway.
The jackpot, which reached record levels after 20 drawings without a winner, was estimated to be nearly $1.6 billion. According to the Texas Lottery, the cash equivalent was $983.5 million.
This Powerball jackpot first started at $40 million on Nov. 7, 2015.
According to Texas lottery officials earlier today, there was an 85.8 percent of the possible number combinations had been sold.
California lotto officials tweeted almost immediately after that a winning ticket was sold in the state. Later, California Lottery spokesperson Russ Lopez said there were two more winning tickets sold, one in Tennessee and one in Florida.
The California Lottery also tweeted that it sold 12 tickets that matched five of the six numbers.
California lottery officials said the winning ticket was sold at the 7-Eleven on Chino Hills Parkway.
The jackpot, which reached record levels after 20 drawings without a winner, was estimated to be nearly $1.6 billion. According to the Texas Lottery, the cash equivalent was $983.5 million.
This Powerball jackpot first started at $40 million on Nov. 7, 2015.
According to Texas lottery officials earlier today, there was an 85.8 percent of the possible number combinations had been sold.
February 16, 2015
Powerball lottery: The states where you can't win $563m
According to US lottery officials there were three winning tickets sold for Wednesday night's Powerball jackpot, with an estimated total payout of $563m (£366m).
That was the fifth-largest prize in Powerball history, and it had created the kind of buzz that only the (minuscule) chance to win incomprehensible sums of money can generate.
The winning tickets were sold in Texas, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, and customers lined up all over the US in the days leading up to the drawing to take their shot at a piece of the big prize. All over, that is, except for six states.
Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah don't participate in Powerball. In fact, they have no state-run lottery whatsoever.
A look at the list of states reveals that there's no one explanation for their reluctance. It all comes down to local concerns - fiscal, moral and geographical.
In Nevada, casino interests dominate state politics, and the prospect of a government-run gambling enterprise operating alongside the Mirages and MGM Grands of the Las Vegas Strip is a non-starter.
What's more, the Nevada government already gets a cut from the state's gambling industry, says Mark Hichar, chair of the gaming law practice group at the law firm Hinckley Allen.
"The government revenues from gambling are such that they don't see the need to have a lottery competing with those commercial interests," he says.
The same goes for Mississippi, where riverboat gambling and Biloxi-based casinos are a popular - and influential - industry that has successfully joined with anti-gambling religious institutions that hold greater sway in the Deep South "Bible Belt" to keep the lottery at bay.
Those Christian ethical concerns are even more dominant in Mississippi's neighbour, Alabama, and Mormon-heavy Utah.
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is opposed to gambling, including lotteries sponsored by governments," the church writes on its website. "Gambling is motivated by a desire to get something for nothing. This desire is spiritually destructive."
Of course the lack of locally sold lottery tickets isn't much of an obstacle for residents who are able to drive to a neighbouring state that participates.
The prospect of losing money across the state line has been an often-cited reason for why states have ended up adopting their own lottery.
According to Terry Rich, president of the Iowa Lottery Authority, the cross-border traffic was a prime reason why his state adopted the lottery in 1985 - and the lure of winning millions is still at play in the non-lottery states.
"A lot of the folks in Utah are heading to Idaho today," he says, "and Nevada people are all heading to California."
It's not a challenge faced by two of the states that don't participate, however - isolated Alaska and Hawaii.
In Hawaii one of the state's political giants - Senator Daniel Inouye - was adamantly opposed to gambling of any kind, arguing it would harm his home-state tourism industry. Gambling, he said, will attract a "different type of people" - "it will not be the type you no see now with their young children, young folks spending their honeymoon."
Inouye died in 2012, but his state's opposition lives on.
In Alaska, on the other hand, the lack of a lottery seems to have less to do with moral questions and more to do with oil. The state generates so much revenue from drilling that it operates with a budget surplus and gives a dividend of nearly $2,000 back to each of its residents every year.
Where states like Georgia, Colorado and Texas use lottery revenues to fund college scholarships, environmental programmes and public schools, Alaskans see no such fiscal urgency.
The numbers involved in the US lottery industry are inarguably massive, however. According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, US lottery revenue in 2014 was $70bn. Powerball alone accounted for $4.81bn.
For comparison's sake, the combined 2014 gross revenue for professional American football, baseball and basketball was only $23.6bn.
It's a booming business that 44 states have found impossible to resist.
That was the fifth-largest prize in Powerball history, and it had created the kind of buzz that only the (minuscule) chance to win incomprehensible sums of money can generate.
The winning tickets were sold in Texas, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, and customers lined up all over the US in the days leading up to the drawing to take their shot at a piece of the big prize. All over, that is, except for six states.
Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah don't participate in Powerball. In fact, they have no state-run lottery whatsoever.
A look at the list of states reveals that there's no one explanation for their reluctance. It all comes down to local concerns - fiscal, moral and geographical.
In Nevada, casino interests dominate state politics, and the prospect of a government-run gambling enterprise operating alongside the Mirages and MGM Grands of the Las Vegas Strip is a non-starter.
What's more, the Nevada government already gets a cut from the state's gambling industry, says Mark Hichar, chair of the gaming law practice group at the law firm Hinckley Allen.
"The government revenues from gambling are such that they don't see the need to have a lottery competing with those commercial interests," he says.
Those Christian ethical concerns are even more dominant in Mississippi's neighbour, Alabama, and Mormon-heavy Utah.
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is opposed to gambling, including lotteries sponsored by governments," the church writes on its website. "Gambling is motivated by a desire to get something for nothing. This desire is spiritually destructive."
Of course the lack of locally sold lottery tickets isn't much of an obstacle for residents who are able to drive to a neighbouring state that participates.
The prospect of losing money across the state line has been an often-cited reason for why states have ended up adopting their own lottery.
According to Terry Rich, president of the Iowa Lottery Authority, the cross-border traffic was a prime reason why his state adopted the lottery in 1985 - and the lure of winning millions is still at play in the non-lottery states.
"A lot of the folks in Utah are heading to Idaho today," he says, "and Nevada people are all heading to California."
It's not a challenge faced by two of the states that don't participate, however - isolated Alaska and Hawaii.
In Hawaii one of the state's political giants - Senator Daniel Inouye - was adamantly opposed to gambling of any kind, arguing it would harm his home-state tourism industry. Gambling, he said, will attract a "different type of people" - "it will not be the type you no see now with their young children, young folks spending their honeymoon."
Inouye died in 2012, but his state's opposition lives on.
In Alaska, on the other hand, the lack of a lottery seems to have less to do with moral questions and more to do with oil. The state generates so much revenue from drilling that it operates with a budget surplus and gives a dividend of nearly $2,000 back to each of its residents every year.
Where states like Georgia, Colorado and Texas use lottery revenues to fund college scholarships, environmental programmes and public schools, Alaskans see no such fiscal urgency.
The numbers involved in the US lottery industry are inarguably massive, however. According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, US lottery revenue in 2014 was $70bn. Powerball alone accounted for $4.81bn.
For comparison's sake, the combined 2014 gross revenue for professional American football, baseball and basketball was only $23.6bn.
It's a booming business that 44 states have found impossible to resist.
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