‘Misleading’ Frasers ad banned amid feud with watchdog
The advertising watchdog has censured Frasers Group for running a “misleading” ad just days after its finance chief ramped up a bitter row with the regulator.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an online advert published by Sports Direct, which is owned by Frasers, for Puma sports top which it said misled shoppers over the value of the discount on offer.
This comes only days after Chris Wootton, Frasers’s finance chief, wrote to the regulator’s chair, blasting its crackdown on so-called fake discounts for “making it harder for traders to promote genuine price discounts”.
Sports Direct’s ad for a Puma zipped baselayer top offered a price of £17 and claimed that the item’s recommended retail price (RRP) was £45.
The advert was misleading because Frasers could not provide enough evidence that the top was “generally sold across the market” at £45, the ASA said.
Frasers argued that the item had been sold for the price on Puma’s website until April 2024, and was available at a third-party online seller for £43.94.
But the watchdog claimed that it had found listings for the item at £17 at another Frasers-owned retailer, and at £23 at another online sporting goods seller.
Shoppers “expect the RRP to be a genuine selling price and to be able to make a saving against that price,” the ASA ruled.
Frasers hits out at discounting crackdown
Just last week, Frasers Group’s Wootton had lashed out at the advertising regulator’s clampdown on RRPs, which it says are used by retailers to inflate the apparent value of the discount on offer.
The regulator’s RRP regime has created “unreasonable and we say unlawful barriers in the way of vigorous price competition in the market,” he wrote on Friday.
“At a time when the cost of living crisis is rightly at the forefront of public concerns, it seems extraordinary that the ASA seems intent on making it harder for traders to promote genuine price discounts to consumers,” he said.
Modern-day shoppers are “savvy” enough to “carry out price comparisons at the touch of a button on their phones, and the fact that consumers keep coming back to us reflects their satisfaction with our approach to discount pricing,” Wootton added.
Frasers has claimed that the ASA’s requirement for RRPs to reflect the price at which a product is “generally sold in the market” has no basis in law, the retail group has claimed.
“This test is unacceptably vague, and makes it very difficult for traders to know whetheruse of an RRP will be permissible,” Wootton said.
Frasers vows to contest ad ban
Frasers Group has vowed to contest the ASA’s ruling, which it says is “fundamentally wrong”. The group claims it supplied the regulator with evidence that its RRP was accurate, but it has “chosen to ignore it”.
A spokesperson for the group said: “We do not accept that it is the valid legal test for whether an RRP is misleading or not, or that it reflects consumers’ understanding of RRPs, which have been around for many decades.
“Its application by the ASA is to the detriment of consumers being able to find the best possible deals and the test is also unworkable in practice for traders, having to compile data from ‘across the market’ in order to establish each and every RRP they use.”
The retail group is “focused on ensuring our customers get the best possible value during this cost-of-living crisis,” the spokesperson added.
Frasers Group was founded as Sports Direct International by billionaire Mike Ashley in 1982 and came to prominence for selling sportswear at rock-bottom prices.
Ashley has later led an expansion into luxury fashion, most recently by building a stake in German fashion house Hugo Boss and buying department store chain Harvey Nichols.
Frasers Group was contacted for comment.