Midnite has had a coordinated advertising campaign banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority after the regulator received 125 complaints from the public.
The banned campaign covered five advertisements in total, including two TV ads, two video ads, and one radio ad, all of which ran during April and May 2026.
The ads depicted characters experiencing a series of minor everyday technological failures, including a malfunctioning supermarket scanner, a broken vending machine, and a faulty hotel key card.
In the visual advertisements, mounting frustration was represented by veins visibly pulsating on the heads of the characters shown on screen.
Each advertisement concluded with a song stating: “We can’t fix the rest, but our betting app [or casino app] is actually pretty good.”
The ASA concluded that the campaign portrayed mounting stress and then gambling was implied as a relief, painting it as a coping mechanism, and deemed it socially irresponsible and potentially harmful.
Midnite disputed the complaints, arguing the advertisements were designed as humorous and exaggerated depictions of familiar technology problems rather than suggestions that gambling could manage emotional difficulties.
The operator said the campaign was intended to promote the app’s reliability, not position gambling as an emotional response to stress or frustration.
The television and radio material breached BCAP rules 17.3.1 and 17.3.2, while the video-on-demand ads breached CAP rules 16.3.1 and 16.3.3, and Midnite cannot run any of the five ads again in the form considered by the ASA.
The TV, VOD, and radio ads were created by advertising agency 72andSunny.
This is not the first time Midnite has faced censure from the ASA, with the regulator previously upholding a complaint over an advert featuring Son Heung-Min.
Researchers at the University of Bristol also previously complained about content marketing on X that included pictures and jokes involving high-profile footballers like Harry Kane, Harry Maguire, and Jack Grealish.
The ruling comes during a period of significant marketing activity for Midnite, which raised a $35m (£26.9m) funding round at the start of 2026.
The operator has been highly visible across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube throughout 2026, and in April it sent its betting app to space in a unique campaign that attracted widespread attention.
On the sponsorship front, Midnite has secured deals with EFL Championship clubs Wolverhampton Wanderers, Southampton, Middlesbrough, and Sheffield United.
The ASA has been intensifying its scrutiny of gambling advertising broadly, issuing a joint warning with the Gambling Commission in June over adverts considered likely to appeal strongly to under-18s.
By early July, the ASA’s AI-assisted monitoring system was tracking more than 10,000 paid online gambling ads every month and had already led to action against 17 gambling ads during 2026.
