Virgin produced a print advertisement which claimed that its
services offered the cheapest way to watch Setanta Sports, a
television network which has exclusive rights to many Premiership
football games.
British Sky Broadcasting (BSB), which owns the Sky satellite
television network that is the main competitor to Virgin's cable
network, complained, claiming that the comparisons in the advert
were unfair and misleading.
Advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
found that Virgin's quoted price of £8 per month in the comparison
was only available to people already paying £11 or £22.50 a month
for Virgin's services.
It said that other options were available which did not incur
those fees. Freeview digital terrestrial television and satellite
television can show Setanta channels. Though they had initial set
up costs the £9.99 Setanta fee was all that viewers had to pay
after that.
"Although we appreciated that there could be some initial costs
involved in the set up of satellite and Freeview, we considered
that those were one-off charges, which were entirely dependent on
customers' preferences and were paid to the equipment supplier; the
costs were not obligatory as part of the supply of any particular
channel," said the ASA ruling. "Unlike BT Vision, Virgin and
satellite customers who subscribed to Sky TV, there were no ongoing
fees upon which the provision of Setanta Sports was dependent."
The ASA said that when potential customers read Virgin's claim
that they were the cheapest provider of Setanta they would infer
that it was able to provide the channels more cheaply than others
on a month-to-month basis, and not that the fee over and above
compulsory subscriptions was cheap.
The ASA also took Virgin to task over its contract terms. While
other providers were able to offer Setanta subscriptions on a
month-by-month basis, Virgin's offer depended on the signing of a
12-month contract not only for Setanta but also for general digital
television and telephone line services.
The ASA said that the tenor of the ad combined with only a small
print acknowledgment of the subscription requirements was
misleading.
"Comparisons…should not mislead or be likely to mislead. Whilst
we noted the text "minimum term contract. Subscription to Virgin
digital TV required" appeared in the small print, we considered
that that qualification did not go far enough to satisfactorily
explain the contractual conditions underlying the provision of
Setanta Sports from Virgin in comparison with the other providers,"
said the ASA ruling.
"We considered that a subscription to a 12-month contract, in
the context of the comparison, was a significant factor that was
likely to affect consumers' decision to purchase and should,
therefore, have been made clear in the ad."
Sky also complained that the Setanta package on a 12 month
contract with Virgin and on a month by month basis with Sky were
not the same products and that any comparison was therefore unfair.
The ASA rejected that allegation.
The ASA said that the ad was misleading. "We told Virgin not to
imply in future ads that they offered the cheapest way to receive
Setanta Sports and also to ensure that comparisons were not
presented in such a way as to give a misleading impression to
consumers," it said.
