Alarm over betting ads (15 June 2024)
A Curtin resident is urging the AFL to ensure underage users of its official app are shielded from ads for online sports gambling.
And he has the support of Curtin MP Kate Chaney, a vocal critic of online gambling who is campaigning to see ads for it banned everywhere, including in sport.
Commerce teacher Ian Ross said he was horrified when he got the official AFL app two years ago to see ads on it for the SportsBet gambling website. One click on an ad took him straight to SportsBet, which is an official AFL sponsor.
"I've always been big on sport but I've always been very anti-gambling," he said. He tried changing his settings on the AFL app to pretend he was under age (he is 63), expecting the SportsBet ads to disappear because under-18s are not permitted to gamble under Australian law.
But still the ads kept coming. Ian said he reported the matter to the AFL then, and many times since. An email from AFL legal counsel Alex Musgrove sent to Ian on March 24 last year said that while AFL partners had rights to advertise on the AFL app, the tech team had reviewed future "marketing integrations" to ensure some content would be blocked to under-18s for the coming men's season.
But Ian said the gambling ads continued when he used the AFL app.
This week he said he worried for young people already sinking under cost-of-living pressures and HECS debt, without adding thousands of dollars worth of gambling losses to the pile.
"It's pretty hard for young kids to get in the real estate market," he said. "It's hard enough for these young kids to save up a deposit. "I personally know of a teenage boy who lost over $25,000 to various sports betting companies over a 12-month period."
On June 3 Ms Chaney told federal parliament: "A year ago, a parliamentary committee unanimously recommended a ban on all ads for online gambling, as we did with tobacco decades ago.
"But gambling can be a hard habit to kick, whether you are a punter with an addiction who sees ads everywhere you look, or a major sporting code that sees gambling revenue everywhere you look.
"Problem gambling can lead to mental health issues, family breakdown and family violence." Ms Chaney said the AFL made a lot of money from online gambling, including a cut every time someone bet on a game, direct sponsorship, and an inflated broadcast deal based on potential gambling ad revenue. The amount spent on gambling advertising had tripled in the past decade.
"Young people now see gambling as an integral part of watching sport," she said. "But it's not." In 2022 Ms Chaney told parliament Nielsen Media Research data showed a gambling ad was shown every two minutes on free-to-air TV in Australia.
"The gambling industry spent $287million on advertising in Australia in 2021, up from $90million in 2011," she said.
The AFL did not respond to a request for a comment.
