My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung calcotton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Just a heads up before we start this episode, we're going to discuss gambling and mental health. If you need support, you can call Gambling Help on one eight hundred eight five eight eight five eight, or you can call Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. Happy Friday. It's the thirtieth of June. I'm Sam, I'm Nina. Advertisements for online gambling are everywhere, especially in the world of sports.
Bet three six five, the world's favorite online sports paying company.
It couldn't be easier. Sports BET's bat was Mike's you just gotch your eye money and run.
But now a parliamentary committee wants to ban all ads for online gambling. It says these ads are damaging to the community, but the gambling industry and even sports bodies have a lot to lose. We'll tell you what you need to know in today's Deep Dive, But first, Nina, what's making headlines this morning?
The new South Wales corruption watchdog has found that former Premier Gladysbury Jicklian committed serious corrupt conduct and breached public trust. AIKEAK didn't identify any conduct by Barry Jicklian which warranted criminal prosecution. It did, however, recommend prosecution be considered against former MP Daryl Maguire. And if you're confused about all of this, go back and listen to yesterday's episode where we explained it all in the Deep Dive.
Ben Robert Smith has agreed to pay the legal costs of the three Australian newspapers he brought defamation proceedings against. The prominent former Australian soldier was un successful in an attempt to sue The Cydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times. The newspaper's legal fees could be in the tens of millions of dollars.
At least seventy seven people have been arrested in France amidst days of unrest and protests against local law enforcement. It comes after police shot dead a seventeen year old boy. French President Emmanuel mccron described the shooting as unforgivable.
And some Friday good news for you. Four time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles will return to gymnastics later this year. The American last competed at the Tokyo Olympics back in twenty twenty one and stepped away to focus on her mental health. Her return will be at the start of August. A parliamentary committee has recommended a total ban on all
advertising for online gambling. This committee had a close look at the harm online gambling was causing and found it was in their works wreaking havoc in Australian communities.
Now.
Particular concern was this link between gambling and psychological harm and even suicide.
How big exactly is the world of online gambling?
Well, we're the world's biggest gamblers. We lose twenty five billion dollars a year and online gambling accounts for a growing share of these losses. Have a think about this. Almost half of Australian's surveyed in twenty twenty two placed a bet on sports or racing, and three times as many of us gamble online today compared to a decade ago.
What I think I struggle with as a non sports fan is actually what this looks like at events in the world. Can you paint a picture of how integrated these betting sites and this betting promotion actually is.
Wherever you're watching sport, there is a presence, an omnipresent presence of sports gambling ads around you. You know, if you go into a live sports game, when you walk into the stadium, there's often carts there where you can place a bet, and then those screens that kind of win around the stadium, they'll often have sports advertising on them. You've got announcements of the odds on the screens. It's huge. Then, if you're watching on the couch at home, you're constantly
updated by even commentators. Sometimes on the odds of the game. They'll say things like, you know, we're bringing you this halftime update courtesy of betting agency X, And they'll say, well, this team's in front and they're paying a dollar ninety right now, so it might be worth placing a bet. And then they always say, you know, their disclosures. Gamble responsibly make sure you consider the impacts of this bet
before you place it. But there's absolutely no doubting that sports betting is intertwined with Australian sport.
And so when the Parliamentary Committee started looking at this world of sports betting and that advertising that promotes it, what's really driving that investigation? What do they say the risks are of this kind of prolific messaging.
Well, they seem to be anchoring their findings on this idea that two thirds of those who gamble on sports are at risk of gambling related harm and that includes things like addiction, relationship breakdown and financial hardship. And it's particularly young men who are at risk. Those who gamble have a suicide risk four times greater than those who don't. So when this Gambling Inquiry asked for submissions, there were people with first hand experience of the impacts of gambling
who are writing in. There was one submission from a man called Jeremy Ryan from Perth who wrote, not long after my sixteenth birthday, gambling took an unrelenting hold on me and has continued to ruin and rule my life for the past eleven years. He said, I can't watch television. I can't watch sport, I can't go on social media, I can't listen to the radio. It is truly, truly astounding the stranglehold these evil and avaricious companies have on everyday Australians like myself.
It's crazy to think of someone getting started in all of this at sixteen and then being inundated with messages for the rest of your life. What rules currently exist around this online gambling space and the way that they're promoted.
Well, according to the Committee, while there is regulation around the advertising of online sports gambling, it's inconsistent. So for example, rules are set out by a combination of federal and state and territory governments and self imposed gambling industry codes of conduct. Now, in general, there are a few limitations on what gambling platforms can offer. So there's one key regulation, which is no in game betting and on when they
can advertise. So there's a ban on sports betting advertisings during life play, but you're allowed before, after the game and during breaks so in halftime.
So those are the rules that are currently in place. What reform did the committee call for in their recommendations.
Well, amongst the several recommendations made by the committee. There was a call for a total ban on all forms of online gambling advertising and inducements.
And what is an inducement? I get an ad, but what's the inducement.
Well, inducements are those special offers that are designed to encourage betting. So think of things like a bonus or an early payout offer, or multis which is several bets grouped together with a higher potential winning, and even something like a loyalty program. And these are things you hear
being promoted a lot. And the committee recommends phasing these out over the next three years, but suggested an exemption for dedicated racing channels and a temporary exemption for small community radio broadcasters.
I think it's fair to assume the gambling industry is not going to be stoked about these proposed reforms. What have we heard so far?
No, of course they're not stoked. This impacts their bottom lines.
So the betting Industry Lobby group opposed the ban, and they asked for caps on how many gambling ads can be shown instead of this blanket ban, and in response to that, the committee argued that partial bands could then be easily avoided for example, when in sport gambling was banned in twenty seventeen, and to give you a sense of what that looked like, if you're watching live sport during the game, there'd be those tickers at the bottom of the screen that would tell you exactly what the
payouts could be or what the odds are in live time. So those were banned in twenty seventeen, but we actually saw an increase in sports betting after that because what sports betting companies would do is they would buy up more spots outside of the in play times, particularly halftime. We've seen a big change to what halftime looks like since that band was introduced.
In order for these reforms to come into effect, they need to be introduced in past in parliament. Do they have political support?
The minister responsible here is Michelle Rowland. She's responsible for gambling regulation and she wouldn't give an indication whether she supported the ban, but she did say the government would consider the report and its recommendations in full.
What about sports bodies, because you've painted this picture of how it integrated this advertising of gambling is in the sports world. How sports bodies themselves likely to be impacted by potential reforms.
Well, they have a lot to lose, and we know a lot more of than we did a couple of weeks ago because of an investigation by four Corners which revealed some really deep ties between the sporting bodies and gambling organizations. And what this investigation found was that agreements between sporting bodies, so we're talking here about like the NRL or the AFL Cricket Australia, they can earn a commission of up to seventeen point five percent of profits from Australians gambling on their events.
That's huge.
Yeah, So there's a bit of a kickpack there and almost competing interests in sporting bodies getting large amounts of money for allowing online gambling to exist within their sport. So to give you an example of how this actually could work, according to the ABC's report, Football Australia gets either one percent of every bet placed in Australia on the soccer game or fifteen percent of the bookmakers profit.
So they're making money off that gambling, even if the gambling companies aren't necessarily profiting exactly.
And that kind of gives you an understanding of how these sporting bodies might be incentivized to push back on banning ads for online gambling.
SAM as society moves to trying to separate gamblings from sport and the experience of sport. Do you think that it'll impact the way you and people in Australia consume sport and enjoy sport.
I think about this a lot. What I've noticed with sports gambling in the last couple of years is it is slowly moving from dominantly public spaces like actual events and television broadcasts, the gambling itself, the ads for the gambling services into more private spaces, and the ways that some of the gambling companies are doing that is by offering it to be a group activity. So the idea that you can place bets with your mates and talk about it and actually ride that win or loss together,
I think is really trying to socialize gambling. And so I think what we can learn from that is that even if this regulation does come through, we're still going to see it exist on that kind of matship level.
So you're talking about this sense of community that exists when everyone's supporting your team and they've got stakes in the game because their money is now on whoever wins or loses. Is there a way or can that exist if people aren't gambling with money.
I think it can and I've been involved in a tipping competition with a big group of friends for many many years now and no money changes hands, and it still allows us to engage in that who's going to win, who's going to lose, how's your team going, who's winning in the table without there being money on the line.
If this episode brought up anything for you, you can call Gambling Help on one eight hundred eighty five eight eight five eight, or you can call Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen.
Thanks for joining us on the Daily OS today. Have a great weekend, and if you enjoy this podcast, it would really help us if you left a review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you're listening, and we'll speak to you on Monday.