Ofcom: ITV competitions left more than 40,000 entrants with no chance of winning
Written by News on 08/12/2020
ITV breached broadcasting rules by running competitions that more than 40,000 entrants had no chance of winning, Ofcom has ruled.
The TV watchdog acted over competitions on Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, This Morning, Loose Women, Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, La Vuelta, and X Factor: The Band.
It said that some 41,252 competition entrants between 2016 and 2019 had no chance of winning.
An Ofcom spokeswoman said: “Our investigation found that people who entered these competitions by post were excluded from the draw, with no chance of winning.
“ITV failed to follow proper procedures and this led to a clear breach of our rules, which require all broadcast competitions to be conducted fairly.”
The competitions invited viewers to enter by phone, text message, on ITV’s website or by post but, while phone, text message and online entries usually cost a premium rate, those entering by post only pay the cost of a stamp.
ITV blamed “human error” by staff tasked with putting information on a spreadsheet, adding that it “deeply regretted” the mistake.
The broadcaster said it had reviewed every competition it had conducted since introducing postal entries in 2014 and the number of competitions affected was less than 1%.
It has put in place plans to improve postal entries procedures and intends to donate money to a charity as a mark of “sincere regret”.
Julian Knight, the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: “It is beyond belief that one of our major broadcasters failed to follow proper procedures over a period of three years with more than 40,000 people duped into believing they had a chance of winning.
“These competitions were associated with some of ITV’s biggest brands, including Good Morning Britain, and ITV was right to refer itself to Ofcom with the full scale of the breach now being made clear.
“People must be able to trust our public service broadcasters – failures on this level risk damaging that trust.”
(c) Sky News 2020: Ofcom: ITV competitions left more than 40,000 entrants with no chance of winning
