Fruity King Twitter ad "offensive", says ASA

Mobile casino operator Fruity King has been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over an “offensive” promoted Tweet it ran on Twitter.

The promoted Tweet featured text that stated: “Arsene Whinger has suffered more abuse from Arsenal fans over the last nine years than a Yemeni child slave in Saudi Arabia. FA-Cup.”

One complainant said they objected to the use of an analogy relating international child abuse to football, and challenged whether the ad was offensive.

In its response, Fruity King parent company Total Odds Media said the promoted tweet had been published by their advertising agency, with whom they were no longer working.

The operator apologised for “any offence caused to the Yemeni community” but said they did not believe the tweet caused “widespread offence” and was a “tasteless joke with no malicious intent”.

Fruity King also said the promoted tweet was a one-off and they had no plans to repeat it.

In its ruling the ASA said it was aware of reports of children particularly vulnerable to slavery being trafficked into neighbouring states.

“We therefore considered that comparing the amount of abuse a football manager received to that of a Yemeni child trafficked into slavery was entirely inappropriate for an ad and concluded that the promoted tweet was likely to cause serious and widespread offence,” the ASA said in its ruling.

Fruity King was told the advert must not run again in its current form, and was warned by the ASA to take particular care when making reference to real world or current events to avoid causing serious or widespread offence.