That 4 corners report last night was a bit of an eye opener.
I hadn’t realised that eg, Football Australia had signed contracts with sports betting related companies, and that they actually get a cut of each bet. And “The NRL earnt 50 million dollars last year from this agreement. It takes a 1-point-2 per cent commission from every bet in Australia on its games, more for riskier bets and gambling on big games like the State of Origin and finals. On some bets … the NRL can take 17.5 per cent of a bookmaker’s profit.”
They won’t want to do anything to reduce gambling. They are incentivised to increase gambling !!
BAN THEM! Ban bloody gambling. Blow up the pokies.
Good. Hopefully this passes and policy continues to squash this shit industry into the ground.
Rephrasing something I’ve heard before, if you have to gamble to enjoy something then you probably don’t actually enjoy it (sports, pubs, etc.)
The gambling companies are so deep in with clubs, associations, broadcasters and the brains of people who consume sports that I don’t know that some people can separate sport from gambling. At the extreme how many people ever watched dog or horse racing purely for the sport?
Eventually many bigger sports are going to be in a similar position to the racing industry where they cannot exist without gambling revenue.
Comprehensive ban would be excellent, but we should at least start with banning prime-time advertising.
And while we’re at it, ban pokies outside of casinos.