The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a paid Facebook ad for football prediction app AI Scorecast after finding it implied that users were very likely to profit from bets informed by its forecasts.
The ad, seen in April, promoted the app as a tool that analysed football data to predict results. Its video voiceover claimed a 97% accuracy rate and said AI could generate high-odds betting slips. The speaker also claimed to have predicted the results of six matches correctly.
The watchdog said consumers would likely interpret those statements as evidence that following the app's recommendations could reliably make money. Yet the promotion did not mention losing bets or the risk of losing money. Its ruling concerns the impression created by the ad; it does not verify that the app achieved the advertised accuracy rate.
HRY Games, which trades as AI Scorecast, did not respond to the ASA's enquiries. The regulator separately found that its failure to engage breached the Code's requirement for advertisers to respond promptly during investigations.
The ASA concluded that the promotion breached general rules on social responsibility and misleading advertising. It ordered that the ad must not appear again in its current form and referred the matter to the Committee of Advertising Practice's Compliance team. It also told HRY Games not to suggest in future advertising that consumers were very likely or certain to profit.
The ruling assessed claims made by a service that could inform gambling decisions, without identifying AI Scorecast as a licensed betting operator or applying the Code's gambling-advertising section to it.
Advertising guidance for betting tipsters already cautions against presenting forecasts as very likely to win or services as a reliable route to profit. It also expects claimed past successes to be supported by independent records.
The AI Scorecast decision applies the broader principle that betting-related marketing must not disguise the financial risk behind apparently precise predictions.
The ASA's September ruling against Midnite also followed AI-assisted ad monitoring, although that case concerned the apparent age of an AI-generated character rather than a claim about betting success.
The ASA identified the AI Scorecast promotion through an AI-assisted monitoring system used to flag potentially non-compliant online ads
