BET99 has launched a responsible-gambling commercial featuring Montreal Canadiens winger Cole Caufield alongside Georges St-Pierre. The campaign centres on practical player-control tools, repeating messages about time, wager and deposit limits.
Caufield appears as BET99’s newest “Assistant” Responsible Gambling Ambassador, while St-Pierre is presented as its “Supreme” Ambassador, Covers reported. BET99 chief executive Jared Beber also appears as himself in the spot, which uses an intentionally comic, unexpected dynamic between St-Pierre and Caufield.
Caufield said he was still working out what the assistant role involved because St-Pierre had given him little direction. He added that responsible gambling meant knowing one’s limits and using the available tools to manage play.
BET99 said its tools include self-exclusion programmes, timeouts and limits. Beber said a serious subject need not produce a forgettable message, and that the aim was for viewers to remember the controls available to them. Creative director Binu Koshy said the campaign sought to put the tools at the centre without making the advertisement feel like a lesson.
The commercial extends a multi-year partnership between BET99 and St-Pierre, who has appeared in several of the operator’s previous advertisements. St-Pierre said responsible gambling was about control, echoing the campaign’s focus on limits.
The campaign arrives against a more restrictive Ontario advertising environment. A Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction report said Ontario’s updated internet-gaming standards, effective Feb. 28, 2024, prohibited athletes and restricted celebrities in internet-gaming advertising and marketing in the province.
The same report found that the 2021 change allowing provinces and territories discretion over single-event sports betting was followed by an appreciable increase in gambling advertising, particularly around live sport. It warned that repeated sports-betting advertising and celebrity endorsements can normalize gambling, especially among young people and young adults, while noting that systematic monitoring of gambling-related harms remains limited.
As of December 2023, Ontario had 49 gambling companies operating 72 websites, according to the report.
