The PM should rebuff the NRL and AFL on gambling ads

The Australian Financial Review revealed on Saturday that the NRL and AFL have personally lobbied the prime minister to reject a major recommendation to ban gambling ads.

The PM shouldn’t be swayed by their self-interested posturing.

Betting is a high-risk form of gambling, and in Australia it is growing.

Online betting surged during COVID-19 and remains high: official data released last month shows Australians lost $9 billion betting in 2022-23. The average Australian’s betting loss is more than double that of the average US or UK resident.

There’s nothing wrong with having the odd punt. The problem is that for too many people, betting leads to significant harm, including financial and mental distress.

Researchers in the US have found that people living in states where sports betting is legal carry higher credit-card debt and suffer more bankruptcies. The problems are most severe for poorer households.

Gambling isn’t like other consumer products. The unpredictable size and pattern of gambling wins and losses continually activates the brain’s reward system. The wiring of our brains makes us vulnerable to gambling harm.

Online betting – unlike, say, lotteries – is particularly high risk. It’s accessible, immersive, and increasingly high speed and complex.

The complexity makes it harder for punters to understand the odds, and creates the potential for tantalising “near misses” – such as when three out of four legs of a “multi” bet are successful.

It’s not just so-called “problem gamblers” who suffer. Many more people report difficulty controlling their gambling. And gambling harm extends to people’s family and friends too.

More than a million Australians either suffer from, or live with someone suffering from, severe gambling problems.

Gambling harm ripples through our communities. Gambling has been linked to family and domestic violence, crime, even suicide.

This harm isn’t inevitable. Australia’s lax regulation of gambling has a lot to answer for.

The Murphy inquiry, a major federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling harm, chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, reached multi-partisan consensus on the changes needed to tip the odds back in punters’ favour.

The inquiry’s central recommendation was a comprehensive ban on gambling ads on TV, radio, and online. Gambling ads normalise gambling for children and trigger the urge to gamble for people at risk.

It’s important that this advertising ban be watertight, including digital ads. Digital ads can target offers and inducements to entice gamblers, including those who are vulnerable to gambling harm (or, from the companies’ perspective, lucrative VIPs).

Predictably, betting companies oppose a gambling advertising ban. And the gambling industry doesn’t stand alone in resisting it – the industry has many powerful allies, including Australia’s beloved football codes.

The NRL, AFL, and other major codes have deals where they receive a proportion of every bet placed on their games.

It may surprise many footy fans to know that the NRL and AFL have an interest not just in gambling ad and sponsorship revenue, but in the size of the betting market itself.

The NRL, AFL, and other major codes have deals where they receive a proportion of every bet placed on their games. The details of the deals are secret, but it’s been reported that the AFL receives at least $30 million a year, and the NRL about $50 million.

No wonder the NRL and AFL bosses have been chiming in to the gambling ad debate. Given their compromised incentives, the prime minister should take their claims with a kilogram or two of salt.

We’ve seen these sorts of hyperbolic claims before. In the 1990s, the tobacco industry took some wild swings when bans on tobacco sponsorship of sport were proposed. When the debate was live in WA, the industry association bought full-page newspaper ads claiming that “you might never see your heroes battle out international cricket at the WACA again”.

Fair to say that one hasn’t borne out.

The reason sport ads and sponsorships are expensive is because they are valuable. Other advertisers jumped in to replace tobacco ads when they were banned. They will do so again if the federal government now has the courage to ban gambling ads.

Sporting codes have had ample opportunity to substantiate their arguments publicly. The Murphy inquiry invited them to submit evidence about the effect of an ad ban on the major sports. But they “did not provide any specifics of how their operations would be changed or cut back if their gambling revenue was restricted”.

Sports industry giants such as the NRL and AFL shouldn’t be dictating Australia’s gambling harm prevention policy. The prime minister should follow the facts, take on the vested interests, and make gambling safer – in the interests of all Australians.