Sportsbet: ‘we stopped using Instagram because we couldn’t be sure we weren’t reaching kids’
One of Australia’s biggest betting agencies has revealed it stopped using social platform Instagram due to concerns it was unable to ensure it wasn’t reaching children.
L:R Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes, Sportsbet’s Ben Sleep, filmmaker Heath Seven’s Bridget Fair and ASB’s Fiona Jolly.
Speaking at the Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit yesterday, Ben Sleep CFO and legal and regulatory affairs director at Sportsbet told the room the wagering sector was grappling with this and other similar issues amid what he described as an “unsustainable” media inflation war between the major betting companies.
Nielsen numbers claim that spending by the top ten wagering firms has soared from $112.3m in FY14-15 to $153.8m but Sleep noted that he wasn’t familiar with sector totals were but said media inflation was a growing problem.
Sportsbet are not being angels here, but merely ensuring they are compliant with regulations and getting ahead of litigation. Doing the right thing of course.
SnapChat is just one of those platforms that has a diverse audience and that’s great for many brands. Like any brand – you need to reach people where your audience hangs out, and where the segmentation can be defined properly. Equally there are brands where the wastage in reaching an audience that is not their key audience applies too – not just for litigious reasons but for efficiencies.
This is just a sensible business decision to segment properly. I don’t feel it warrants the news it has attracted here.