The SA gambling site that sent influencers to a pre-school

South Africa’s snowballing gambling epidemic has little by way of regulation standing in its way but one thing the National Gambling Act does expressly prohibit is marketing to children. This does not stop the endless profusion of child-like ads and games but it does at least draw one hypothetical line.

Despite this, World Sports Betting (WSB), a prominent local online gambling site, effectively marketed their product directly to pre-school students – in their classroom.

The company has laid the blame squarely with an unrelated television production company working in partnership with SABC3’s morning variety show Expresso – saying that WSB was just the sponsor for a competition it did not in fact manage.

The competition in question is called “Bet to the Beat” and involves influencer Chad Jones making surprise visits to entrants at their homes or workplaces – and then having them compete for cash prizes on a casino-style spinning wheel.

In this instance that workplace was Cornwall Hill College in Pretoria and the winner was a pre-school teacher.

The result was the influencer Jones, accompanied by a model dressed in “showgirl” garb setting up the WSB-branded prize wheel in a full classroom so that their teacher could spin it.

A video posted online shows how the children are encouraged to enthusiastically participate in the WSB-branded event, clapping hands and cheering when their teacher wins money. They also witnessed her getting an extra reward for showing everyone that she does in fact use the World Sports Betting gambling app on her phone.

A video posted online by gambling group World Sports Betting for its “Bet to the Beat” promotional campaign.

The gambling company has in any case passed the buck wholly to the production company Alan Ford Productions which, according to WSB, planned the show together with the SABC’s Expresso team with zero input from the sponsor.

“Gambling marketing has no place in schools or in the classroom. This is why we withdrew from the Bet to the Beat campaign with immediate effect and ensured that the content published by the independent production company on social media was removed.”

Alan Ford, the producer of the show, followed the betting company’s cue, telling us that when the episode was filmed back in July (it was meant to air this week) WSB had no involvement whatsoever apart from sponsoring the prize.

Contenders enter the competition through the Expresso website and when the teacher was selected as a winner, arrangements were made with the school principal to spring the surprise on her at work.

“The principal gave us permission to film and led the production team into the classroom, where the teacher was surprised and invited to spin the wheel to determine her cash prize. We had not intended to film the surprise in a classroom with children present. Nevertheless, the decision to proceed was ours, and Alan Ford Productions accepts responsibility for that production oversight,” said Ford.

In hindsight the spinning of the wheel could have been filmed away from children in, for instance, the principal’s office, he told us.

“I apologise for this oversight and for any reputational harm caused to World Sports Betting.”

According to Ford the episode got pulled at the last minute after it was seen by WSB which, he says, were the ones who nixed it.

The episode allegedly only got out due to the influencer-host Jones who apparently posted it online of his own accord.

Ultimately, despite some semblance of checks and balances almost quashing this video, the disparate industry around promoting the gambling sector has once again shown how it can penetrate essentially anywhere even while any single actor can claim having made innocent mistakes.

But the point isn’t really whether it was seen but rather that the event took place in a classroom to begin with.

What about the school?

This week, months after the fact and due to the emergence of the video online, Cornwall Hill College addressed a letter to parents suggesting that it did not quite understand “the gambling affiliation and promotional implications of the activity” which it also says “were not adequately declared”.

In the letter, the principal of the pre-school division of Cornwall, Janine Dumas-Kuchling, claims that the same teacher involved in the Bet on the Beat incident had previously also won another more innocent call-in gameshow sponsored by Suzuki called Pop Quiz. This somehow paved the way for there being little vigilance when a film crew promoting an actual gambling company showed up.

The lucky teacher “informed the school that she had won another prize and that representatives would need to visit the school to conduct a prize-wheel spin to determine the final award amount”.

“In the excitement surrounding her achievement, permission was granted for the activity to take place on campus.”

Dumas-Kuchling further told parents that the school was focused on protecting children’s privacy in the presence of cameras – and not so much the actual content of what was being filmed.

Read amaBhungane’s previous reporting on the gambling epidemic and the disparate actors that facilitate it here and here.

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