DAZN host Diletta Leotta has seen her new TV advert banned in Italy because it involves ‘sexualising content’, according to a report.
Leotta, 33, has worked on the touchline as a host for DAZN’s Serie A coverage in her native Italy, and on a number of TV shows throughout her career. The wife of ex-Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius has also been involved with podcasting and radio.
Leotta married Karius in 2024 but was recently accused by her ex-colleague Federico Balzaretti’s wife of ‘putting her a** in his face’, and she has now been embroiled in another controversy.
The presenter was recently involved in a TV advert with shoe company U-Power, which included the 33-year-old speaking about the shoes after another woman was seen singing on stage in a short skirt, with a young child watching on, seemingly in awe.
Various men are then seen pulling faces as they put on the shoe, with one rubbing the shoe up against his face.
But the advert, according to Corriere Della Sera, has been banned because it ‘sexualises the gaze of a child’.
DAZN host Diletta Leotta has seen her new TV advert banned because of ‘sexualising content’
The 33-year-old appeared in an advert to promote a new shoe for company U-Power
The jury of the Advertising Self-Discipline Institute ordered the advert to be pulled because it breached a rule that regulates the protection of children and young people
Leotta married former Liverpool and Newcastle goalkeeper Loris Karius in 2024 but has been a prominent figure in the media
The jury of the Advertising Self-Discipline Institute ordered the advert to be pulled because it breached a rule that regulates the protection of children and young people.
On May 9, the IAP jury closed the proceedings opened by the Control Committee of the same institute. It ruled that the advert is in conflict with Article 11 of Code, which part states: ‘Representations of behaviors or attitudes aimed at the sexualisation of children, or of subjects who appear to be such, are prohibited.
The company’s founder, Franco Uzzeni, said: ‘Malice is in the eye of the beholder. But at least we know that our commercial was seen and appreciated given the sales.’
Italian journalist Selvaggia Lucarelli had criticised the advert, saying: ‘The video opened with a shot from behind of a child under the stage where a singer was performing in a miniskirt that reached her crotch, then moving on to a shot of the child’s face with his gaze upwards and his mouth open in a sort of ecstasy like a vision of the Madonna.
‘In practice, it was the first time that a child, who in the advertisement will have a stage age of eight, saw a woman’s underwear.
‘I wrote about it in my Instagram stories, finding it sad to represent a minor in such an ambiguous situation to sell a pair of shoes’.