It was alleged that SupaPesa was offering gifts and prizes with no intention of supplying them therefore engaging in misleading and deceptive advertising and unconscionable conduct.
SupaPesa has been running a betting competition called BetYanga; which requires participants to correctly predict the outcomes of 13 games. For one to win a prize, they have to predict 6, 7, 11, 12 or 13 number of games correctly.
On 11th March 2021, a player participated in the competition and predicted 6 games correctly. However, the Respondent refused to give out the prize, claiming that the correct predictions had to be consecutive games. The Complainant alleged that this was contrary to the initial information or advert by the Respondent.
Investigations established that the Respondent published two messages, one in English, and another in Chichewa on the criteria for one to win a prize.
The Chichewa message, however, did not specify that the games have to be the first 6 or 7 consecutive games. As such, the Complainant had won a prize under the Chichewa version since he managed to predict 6 games correctly.
By failing to give out the prize money to the Complainant when the Chichewa terms and conditions were very clear, the Respondent engaged in the conduct of offering prizes with no intention of supplying them. This was an infringement of Section 43(1)(j) of the CFTA.
The Complainant admitted the offence and advised the Commission that they would settle the same with the Complainant.
The Commission resolved that the Respondent should pay the Complainant the prize money that was prescribed for participants who got 6 correct predictions and that the Respondent should pay the prize money to all other participants who correctly predicted 6 or 7 matches regardless of whether or not they did so consecutively;