Paddy Power has launched an advertising campaign poking fun at foreign owners of British football clubs that features a team of players wearing Middle Eastern robes.
The ‘New Owner, New Kit’ TV campaign shows the fictional Middle Eastern owner of a British team in a football ground, with a voiceover commenting how “new owners can really sheikh things up sometimes”.
It then says that he has already changed the kit, and his team run on to the pitch dressed in Middle Eastern robes, while their opponents are in standard kit. “Not too Abu Shabby, certainly,” says the voiceover. “It’s certainly breathable.”
A string of players are then shown tripping over their clothes, with their falls being repeated in slow motion. “There’s certainly contact between his face and the floor,” says the voiceover. “Let’s hope the away kit’s a bit better, eh?”
A Paddy Power spokeswoman said: “The ‘Owner’s New Kit’ ad is one of three executions in a new campaign designed to carry our football offers this season.
“The idea is that the Premier League is so unpredictable – titles being decided by slips, managers head-butting players, underdogs teaching favourites new tricks – that if you’re going to have a bet, you’ll need some insurance because anything could happen.”
She added: “In this case we’re having a little fun at the expense of megalomaniac owners of football clubs who make sweeping changes without a second thought for the fans. Think Assem Allam doing away with 100 years of history by trying to change Hull City’s name to Hull Tigers. Or Vincent Tan changing Cardiff’s kit from blue to red just because he thought it was a luckier colour. Or Mike Ashley renaming the historic St James’ Park the Sports Direct Arena.”
Paddy Power is no stranger to controversy in its advertising campaigns. Last year, it ran an ad based around the Ryder Cup golf contest that featured Ukip leader Nigel Farage declaring “I love Europe” and praising “the wine, the food, the excellent transport systems, the clogs … and the greatest golfers in the world.”
It attracted a record 5,200 complaints with an ad offering “money back if he walks” for punters betting on the outcome of the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. The Advertising Standards Authority took the “unusual step” of ordering the campaign to be pulled immediately, saying it was it was likely to cause “widespread offence”.
In 2010, it launched an ad showing a cat being kicked into a tree by a blind footballer. Despite being the most complained-about ad of the year, it was cleared by the ASA and did not face a ban.
The ASA ruled that it was “unlikely to be seen as humiliating, stigmatising or undermining to blind people and was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence”. In terms of the cruelty to animals, the ASA said that the situation was “surreal and improbable” and was “unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence”.
Paddy Power also created 2002’s most complained-about ad, a campaign that placed odds on two elderly women making it across the road safely, which was banned by the ASA.
