Slots make betting look like child’s play
Cuddly animal themes rife across online gaming sites
FLUFFY kittens, pink dragons and chubby pandas – these cute creatures wouldn’t look out of place in a child’s storybook.
They’re also typical of the sort of child-friendly images that are being used by gambling websites.
The betting industry is banned from directly targeting children with adverts, but there is nothing to stop websites offering games filled with these fairy tale favourites.
There are dozens of them, as a simple Google search reveals, and some have no age checks in place.
One slot-machine game featured on several websites is based around a cartoon Pied Piper, which seems appropriate considering that the Pied Piper lured kids to their doom.
It is freely available to play with no checks on betting sites including the Malta-registered videoslots.com.
Equally enchanting are the cuddly pets on the slot machine game OMG! Kittens on Slotboss.co.uk.
Anyone can have a go without checks in “free-play mode”.
The site is run by LeoVegas Gaming Ltd, a Swedish company based in Malta, while the game is made by WMS Gaming of Chicago – this is a global industry.
Other equally accessible gambling games on the site include Pixies, Top Cat and Inspector Gadget.
On Meccabingo.com there’s Fluffy Favourites, which boasts how it is “Packed with pink elephants, happy hippos and dinky dragons”.
You can sign up with a fake address, date of birth, and email address and to tempt you to start playing you’re given on-site money.
The only age verification is by checking a box.
The site is run by Rank Group – latest annual profits £83.5million.
Over on Betfair there are slot machine games showing cartoon penguins, the children’s card game Top Trumps and the fairy tale character the Big Bad Wolf. Part of the same company as Paddy Power, Betfair had an online revenue of £898million last year.
“No one under the age of 18 is allowed to bet with Betfair, we have rigorous authentication procedures that kick in as soon as someone seeks to fund an account,” the company stated.
“All the games on our site are tightly controlled, and advertised in accordance with guidance issued by the Gambling Commission and the ASA”.
In theory children can’t lose money on these sites but our sister newspaper the Sunday People told last week how easily a 13-year-old boy blew £60,000 in a week betting online after setting up an account using his father’s credit card. We contacted these companies for comment and were referred to the industry body Remote Gambling Association.
Spokesman Brian Wright said: “From an online gambling perspective there is always a risk of designing fun games for adults that might inadvertently attract children but it would never be the intention to deliberately target youngsters,” he insisted.
Contrast that with an adjudication last week by the Advertising Standards Authority against m88.com, run by ProgressPlay Limited of Malta.
The watchdog’s ruling concerned three games and just look at their names: Fairytale Legends Red Riding Hood, Fairytale Legends Hansel and Gretel, and Fairies Forest.
M88, sponsors of Bournemouth FC, said the games were made by a third party software company and appeared on other gambling sites, as if that makes it OK.
The company also insisted that they “did not feature any content that was likely to be of particular appeal to children”.
The ASA disagreed and ruled that the games violated multiple advertising codes.
Ian Angus, programme director at the Gambling Commission, said: “It is unacceptable for gambling websites to display freely accessible adverts, which feature images that are likely to appeal particularly to under-18s.
“We support any action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority against firms that fail to protect children.”
Recent figures published by the Government estimate 370,000 children gamble every week.
These online games are certainly not helping the problem.
A boy of 13 blew £60k in a week using his dad’s card