Paddy Power never seems far away from controversy, and they are at it again. This time the Irish betting firm has gone a step further and upset the Bank of England.
Their latest promotion used a very clever twist on augmented reality software to bring a 10 pound note life to life. When you took a picture of this note the Queen came alive and started giving you her opinion on the different football games which the firm was offering odds on.
It was started to help punters looking to cash in on Euro 2012 games and was expected to roll on into the domestic campaign.
Now it has been revealed that the Bank of England has given Paddy Power instructions to stop using the augmented reality ad.
No Decent Footie Anyway
A spokesman for the betting giant said that the Bank of England has confirmed that they have “broken the law” in their advertising campaign. The spokesman didn’t seem too convinced that they had done so but he did say that they were going to take the Queen off her pundit’s role for just now due to the “absence of decent footie”. We will need to wait and see what happens if they try and relaunch the idea again once the football season kicks off.
The law in question is the section 18(1) of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981. This law means that you cannot reproduce money in any form, on any scale and of any substance without the written permission of the Bank of England.
The Barclays Premier League starts on the 18th of August, so we await further developments before then.
