Sporting Index rapped for ‘seriously offensive’ Christ the Redeemer World Cup ad
Online sports betting company Sporting Index has landed in hot water after it ran a print advert featuring an image of the Christ the Redeemer statue with a bikini-clad woman.
The ad, seen in City AM and the Racing Post, showed a digitally manipulated image of the statue, which showed Jesus with his arm around a woman with a bottle of champagne in the other arm. Text at the bottom of the ad read "There's a more exciting side to Brazil".
A total of 25 readers, including the Evangelical Alliance, complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), and said it was likely to cause "serious or widespread offence". The ASA itself challenged whether the ad linked gambling with sexual success.
Sporting Index defended the ad and said that it used the image because of its strong association with Rio de Janeiro as a destination rather than its religious connotations.
The betting company added that it intended the imagery in the ad to be “light-hearted, humorous and cartoon-like” instead of true-to-life.
City AM received three complaints about the advert directly, but said it took the view that it should be open to all ads apart from those that breached the advertising guidelines.
The ASA said that the image of Jesus with a scantily clad woman holding a bottle of champagne was likely to cause offence to a “significant number of Christians”, regardless of its humorous intention or references to Rio de Janeiro and the World Cup.
The watchdog added that although it understood the woman’s clothing to reference Brazilian beaches, it deemed the context not clear that the woman's clothing reinforced the implication of sexual contact with the statue. The ASA said the ad breached the code as it linked gambling with sexual success.
The ad must not appear again in its current form.