Paddy Power has confirmed that it has concluded its partnership with the Irish public national news service RTÉ.
RTÉ has to respect the new advertising rules which were brought in ahead of gambling regulation in Ireland and because of that Paddy Power has decided to end its sponsorship of live televised football.
The new guidelines introduced by the Irish Bookmakers Association (IBA) bans whistle-to-whistle advertising starting with 1 January 2022.
Whistle-to-whistle covers the duration of a live broadcast event, from five minutes prior to the start of a sporting occasion to five minutes after the event ends, including breaks of play and half-time adverts, as well as pitch-side LED and other forms of marketing.
The company says it examined the use of its “Take a Break – Safer Gambling” advertising, but for now it is unclear if this type of marketing represents a breach of the IBA’s code that will come into force in 2022.
RTÉ did not comment on the matter and only stated it did not wish to speak on commercial issues.
However, confirming that Paddy Power has ended its partnership with RTÉ, the brand said: “Paddy Power doesn’t just support the incoming whistle-to-whistle ban as a company, we have already taken a market-leading position on this intervention.
“We took the decision to voluntarily implement a pre-watershed whistle-to-whistle ban on advertising ahead of Euro 2020, which applied to any adverts run on RTÉ in the interim.
“We also moved to use all existing slots available to us pre- and post-match to exclusively promote our ‘Take A Break – Safer Gambling’ tool during Ireland’s final four matches in the Men’s Fifa World Cup Qualifiers.”
