If gambling advertising isn’t the problem, what are we doing about the problem?
There is a rather important AFL match on TV today, and every few minutes, we’ll be reminded we can bet money on that match. And not just bet money, but win money. Lots of money. Yes, today will most likely mark the final AFL final that is drenched in sports betting advertising – and aside from those who profit from it – I don’t think anyone is going to miss the bombardment.
The Albanese government is currently copping pressure from all angles regarding the looming proposed ban on sports gambling advertising. There’s the obvious pushback from the TV and radio networks, who pocket a cool $238 million a year from it, as well as blowback from the sporting leagues and teams who are funded by similar wagering sponsorship – as well as by the inflated TV rights deals that rely on gambling advertising.
The chief advocate of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Tim Costello, said of the government: “They continue to fail to explain why we’ve got the greatest gambling losses in the world, but keep fiddling at the edges to keep the sporting codes and media outlets onside.”
Opponents of a total ban on sports wagering advertising noted with glee Albanese’s strong declaration to enforce age limits on social media and asked why can’t we do the same with gambling ads?
Kai Cantwell, CEO of Responsible Wagering Australia – the industry peak body representing the likes of bet365, Sportsbet and Pointsbet – has previously called for “age-verification requirements” and opt-out software as the obvious answers to our nation’s gambling ills. He said on Tuesday he is “committed to reducing the exposure of children and vulnerable individuals to gambling advertising – while still backing sports and broadcasters that rely on this funding”.
Sounds perfect, if impossible. How would it be policed? Sure, you can accurately age-block content on a device using all the same cookies that knows your age, location, and which brand of samurai sword you keep Googling. But families watch sports together, and therefore families watch ads together.
And opt-out schemes?
This week, the ABC reported on a gambling addict who imposed a lifetime ban on himself through the government’s self-exclusion program, BetSTOP, only to find himself able to simply sign up again using a different first name, email address and phone number. He lost $70,000 to eight different betting companies over just six months.
In response to the ABC’s report, a spokesperson for Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland said the government would “shortly commence a statutory review of BetStop to consider whether the regulatory framework is fit for purpose”.
Sure, any mechanics in place to prevent a problem gambler from problem gambling is a good step forward – but the puny willpower of our better angels is no match for the devil on your shoulder, firing up the betting app, and telling you that the Raiders haven’t looked this hot since the glory days of – if not Rome, than at least since the glory days of Meninga.
So, yeah, self-exclusion is as useless as me telling you not to think of a banana.
Nevertheless, Albanese is adamant his government has “done more in our first two years on gambling than any previous government ever”. So, if he is dragging his feet on a complete ban on gambling advertising – it’s mainly because the PM doesn’t truly believe it’s a problem.
The reason I know this is because he has repeatedly told us so.
Albanese is adamant that sports betting isn’t actually the issue at all when it comes to our country’s outsized gambling problem.
In three separate interviews over the past fortnight, he pointed to poker machines as being the scourge. Certainly, they are responsible for the decline in live music in pubs that has slowly bled the industry dry over the past 25 years. But this is a side issue.
On ABC Perth this past Tuesday, host Mark Gibson complained to the PM about the millions of Australians being “bombarded by gambling ads” during the upcoming AFL Final.
“Can we just get on with banning them?”, he asked.
“The problem here, of course,” Albanese began, “is that sport gambling represents under 5% of the problem gambling issue. Overwhelmingly it’s about poker machines. Then it’s followed by lotteries and lotto tickets and those issues as well.”
He made this same point the prior Thursday, when speaking to ABC Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas, citing “the experts” who say “the problem isn’t advertising. The problem is gambling. That’s the problem.”
He continued: “Overwhelmingly, almost 70% of problem gambling is about poker machines, an additional, about 15%, is about lotteries and lottos and those things.
“I haven’t seen a campaign about advertising in lotteries and Lotto, which is a far bigger problem than sports gambling.”
Again, on Thursday morning, Albanese pulled Bridget Brennan up on ABC News Breakfast, when she asked if he would “squib” on gambling reform.
“Well, you notice ‘gambling reform’ is what you said, rather than ‘gambling advertising reform’” he argued, explaining “the problem here is problem gambling”, pointing to “everything from lottery tickets through to poker machines and other forms of gambling”.
The NSW Minister for Gaming and Racing David Harris agrees: “In NSW, gaming machines represent the highest risk of gambling harm.”
So, if the problem is so clear cut – and if Albanese is, indeed, in charge of the country – then why hasn’t anything been done?
Well, for one, it’s a state issue. And Albanese has been clear in his desire to keep it a state issue – which is to say, a problem for the premiers. He has enough to deal with, policing the supermarkets and blurbing Radio Birdman books.
Speaking on a Daily Aus podcast in February, the PM made his views on this clear, when host Tom Crowley noted “Australia’s got one of the worst pokies problems in the world,” and that the Gillard government briefly considered national controls. “Will you?”, Crowley asked.
“Look, it’s the states that regulate poker machines,” Albanese responded. “The Commonwealth does have responsibility for some gambling issues.”
The exchange continued as follows.
CROWLEY: The Gillard government did consider a mandatory scheme.
PRIME MINISTER: Well it didn’t do it.
CROWLEY: No, it didn’t.
PRIME MINISTER: It didn’t do it because it’s a state responsibility.
Enough said. Albanese later added: “What doesn’t work out terribly well is if you have both jurisdictions trying to compete over the same issues.”
Recently, the NSW Government – home of the highest number of poker machines per capita on the entire spinning globe – has had a few cracks at policing poker machines.
Cashless gambling machines that require a card with a pre-set limit are currently being trialed across 14 pubs and clubs in NSW, everywhere from Canterbury Leagues Club (home to the Bulldogs), to the Stag & Hunter in Newcastle (home to a Monday evening grunge jam night called ‘Temple of the Stag’), with the results of this trial to be handed down in November.
Since July, venues with more than 20 poker machines have had to employ a Responsible Gambling Officer to watch over the punters. Of course, as with BetStop, the real problem-gamblers will find a loophole to all this, while the fairweather flutterers will simply find it annoying – yet another layer of government admin piling upon their recreational time.
They’ve also banned external gaming-related signage, reduced cash input limits from $5,000 to $500 for new machines, and banned political donations from clubs involved in gaming.
The NSW Government – in both its current Labor and former Liberal guises – has successfully targeted the Star Casino over the past few years, too, as the rot, corruption and crime that is central to the success of any casino became too blatant for the state to reasonably ignore anymore.
They commissioned an independent inquiry into The Star which found in 2022 that “The Star was unfit to hold a casino license in New South Wales” and doubled down on these findings last month after it became clear that the 2022 recommendations had not been implemented in a satisfactory way.
So, why the heightened focus on sports betting ads?
Is it just that they are annoying?
For all the talk of problem gamblers and children being indoctrinated at a young age, could it be that simple?
Albo concedes this much, at least – in fact, it seems to be his entire through line on the argument.
Two of the aforementioned ABC interviews from the past fortnight find him expressing this annoyance.
On ABC Perth, he said “I know that as much as anything else, it can be annoying, the breaking up of ads, but we’re looking at a range of options.”
Host Mark Gibson then pointed out “It’s not just the ads that are annoying, it’s the harm it’s doing to people in society as well.”
And on ABC Radio National, Albanese said: “Now, sports gambling ads, I find them annoying.”
The strongest language he has ever mustered against gambling advertising was after a 2023 parliamentary inquiry proposed a blanket ban on television ads, and sponsorship.
“What we’ll do is give consideration to the recommendations,” Albanese told ABC Radio Queensland.
“I’ve said before that the idea you’re watching a footy game and on comes an ad for gambling, I find pretty reprehensible.”
Note, it’s the interruption to the flow of the footy he’s finding reprehensible.
Do you know what else is quite annoying, and quite reprehensible?
That a Nielsen study commissioned by watchdog ACMA showed that between May 2022 and April 2023, over a million gambling advertisements were shown across TV, radio, and online. A million!
Another person who believes there’s a gaping gulf between the lure of the poker machines and the thrill of a well-placed sporting bet, is Tim Freedman, co-author and singer of Blow Up The Pokies.
The Whitlams’ ode to the destructive, invasive nature of poker machines and their ability to wreak real damage was written in the wake of a tragedy: the band’s bass player Andy Lewis was addicted to the machines – one afternoon he put his entire pay check through a machine and then killed himself. He was 33.
Freedman’s eulogy became a hit single, and he quickly became the de facto voice of the anti-gambling movement for a while. All of which makes his recent detour into the world of sports betting the more surprising.
“I’ve never talked about it because I’m the guy who wrote Blow Up The Pokies, why would I be a gambler? Except I wasn’t losing,” he told music journalist Bernard Zuel in 2022.
Freedman says he “was on the periphery of horse racing culture” from around 2011, when he met a group of full-time gamblers who use swathes of high-tech data to buck the system.
“To be honest, I was a full-time gambler for four years,” Freedman told Zuel, revealing he won $300,000 in one afternoon.
“But when you’re betting that much, it means you’re losing some Saturdays.” His system worked so successfully, several major betting agencies stopped taking his bet.
“If you go close to making 3% on turnover, they don’t need you, because you’re not a loser. It’s just a hi-tech version of the pokies, it’s no different. You are allowed to win, it’s just not that common.”
So, in the end, it’s a lot like the pokies. With one difference, as Freedman told The Australian in a separate 2022 piece published some weeks later: “Pokies are a system in which the bettor always loses, whereas the horses – in this instance – were not.”
In the end, Freedman said he quit the horses because the betting companies “were just getting better at their risk analysis. Picking the winner’s just a third of it, and I was involved in the other two thirds”.
Or, to put it another way, the house always wins.
Albanese should heed this warning when considering his next move on sports wagering advertising. There’s pressure from all sides on this decision, no clear moral throughline, and hypocrisy no matter which angle you approach the issue. No wonder Albo would rather talk about pub rock from the 1980s.
At the end of the day, however, Tim Costello might have the very best argument to propel Albanese into action – his own legacy.
“John Howard did gun reform, Kevin Rudd did smoking ads,” Costello said. “Albo’s government set up the Murphy report, people want a ban, we don’t want kids groomed – but Albo’s going to squib it.”
Good point. For Albo to park his name in the history books, he need to have fixed a major societal problem that can be explained in two words: Gambling ads.
Then again, Albanese recently provided a blurb for the recent book about Aussie punk pioneers Radio Birdman – in his mind, his legacy is already ensured. Yeah, hup!
Enjoy your weekend.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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topics
AFL
AFL Grand Final
Anthony Albanese
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gambling reform
NSW Government
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Why would anyone rock the boat? There’s a massive amount of money being made from gambling advertising in Australia, with an obscene number of gambling companies. It’s laughable that even people at Sportsbet are calling for regulatory action—seriously when the monopoly itself is looking for ways to cut back? Maybe we all love gambling as much as we love advertising. If you get your foot through the door, it’s more consistent than government money! Do you shame your employee’s for gambling? Maybe agencies could stop working with companies that prompt advertising gambling ads? It’s always left to the government to employ your ethics and values?
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