The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has scolded the betting industry-funded Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) for a cinema promo that a viewer found “predatory and sexually abusive.”

The ad featured an older man sitting at a desk talking to a younger woman sitting on a bed. The man delivers a suggestive monologue recalling “a bit of fun” the woman had, how her “whole body was tingling,” that it was “the best feeling you’ve ever had,” and telling her “don’t tell me you don’t remember that.”

At the end of the spot, the woman gets up from the bed, walks over to the desk, where the man has now been replaced by a laptop logged on to an online bingo site, where the woman begins to play. The ad closes with large text directing viewers to “BeGambleAware.org.”

In response to the complaint, the RGT insisted that the ‘Voices’ campaign was intended to be provocative, memorable and representative of problem gamblers’ “inner demon.” The promo had been approved by both the British Board of Film Classification and the Cinema Advertising Agency to air before films rated PG and above, while the RGT had booked the ad to run only at screenings of the 18+ film Trainspotting 2.