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.
We absolutely should ban it all ASAP, but if banning all gambling advertising is too big a step for the Government right now, could we please at least ban the type of ad where one of the sports commentators says “now a word on the odds from <gambling company>”, pretending it’s part of the actual broadcast? Those are so insidious.
Removing this form of revenue feom commercial sports will destroy the commercial sport industry.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but all those profiteers will need a source of income other than young people’s dreams and injuries.
That’s the same sort of thing that was said when smoking bans were introduced.
Sports will adapt. They’ll find other industries to sponsor them. There might be a period of uncertainty, but life will go on.
Edit: besides, I was particularly concentrating on the especially insidious type of gambling ad where they pretend it’s a natural part of the broadcast. There’s absolutely no justification for that kind of deceptive practice.
Here’s another reason to ban them:
They’re shit ads.
There’s nothing witty or entertaining or in anyway good about having to sit through a fuckin’ gambling ad. Oh, look, it’s three NIDA drop-outs with North Shore accents doing the best (ie, shithouse) attempt at some dinky-di fair-go-cobber accents and lingo that some MBA from the Eastern suburbs advertising agency is Authentic Tradie Ockerese, because that’s who they’re targeting.
Two bucks says they don’t fast track it.
Official betting partners should absolutely be banned! Advertising IN the sport broadcast itself is morally bankrupt as fuck.
