Jocular gambling ad in trouble

An Australian sports betting company is under fire for a TV ad starring former Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who was first across the line in the 100 metres sprint at the 1988 Seoul Olympics before testing positive for steroids and leaving the Games in disgrace.

Federal sports minister Greg Hunt has demanded the agency pull the ad, while the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority. It also issued a statement which in part said:

    "This advert makes light of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport and sends the completely wrong message that the use of drugs in sport is normal.

    This advertising campaign belittles the achievements of clean athletes and denigrates those who work to protect clean sport across the world."

But betting agency Sportsbet has scoffed at all that.

"We make no apologies for injecting some humor into advertising," Sportsbet PR manager Christian Jantzen told HuffPost Australia.

"We wanted to express how fast our new unfairly fast Android app is and what better way than to use Ben Johnson?"

The ad promotes the new android app using a series of double entendres like "juiced up" and "performance enhancement" and "everyone's on it" and "tested positive for speed" and "extra gear", before culminating in the line "it puts the 'roid into android".

SOURCE