What are your thoughts on this? Seems to me a long overdue discussion for the government to have. The ads are out of control.
It’s a well reported fact that Australia is one of the most gambling-ridden countries on the planet, and the sheer prevalence of gambling advertising is clearly a massive contributor to this. If it were up to me, online sports gambling would be banned outright. You could still go to the trots and bet on a horse over the counter if you really wanted, but the real trouble is that there’s nothing stopping you from being brainwashed by SportsBet relentlessly at every ad break, downloading their app, and blowing your life savings without lifting a finger. If you actually had to get off your backside and go somewhere to bet, I doubt the problem would be nearly as widespread as it is today.
But then you look at all the oldies soiling themselves in front of the pokies machines and wonder if it really would make any difference.
I’ve thought about the practicality of banning it online but think it would only really work for Australian based companies.
The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 already bans online gambling AFAIK, but does not regulate offshore companies, or “licenced services”. I don’t see why it couldn’t be updated to remove such exceptions - and you can’t tell me that BlueBet and SportsBet and all the rest of those don’t have ABNs. The problem companies aren’t the offshore ones.
