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A
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been slammed over the course of years for failing to crack down on the more than 1 million gambling ads broadcast every year on Australia's free to air TV and radio. Not to mention the rest of our gambling industry, which has driven some families to financial ruin. Then finally came the Prime Minister's announcement of a gambling overhaul just over a week ago. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris and you're listening to the Morning edition from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Today business reporter Kishore Napier Raman on just how much so called filthy money our government is taking away from stakeholders and if there's any chance these reforms might break the link between children and Sports Wagering. It's April 13th.
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B
Kishore, welcome back to the podcast.
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C
Hey Sam, great to be here.
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B
Okay, I can't wait to delve into this because the government has finally announced a long delayed crackdown on gambling advertising. So can you just tell us what changes has Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced
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A
that he is going to bring in?
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C
Yes, finally. It was a long time coming. So a couple of hours before the Easter break at the National Press Club, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a long awaited suite of reforms on gambling advertising.
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D
Today I announce we will build on the reforms that we've already delivered to combat gambling harm.
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C
So from July, gambling ads will be capped at a maximum of three per hour between 6am and 8.30pm there's not going to be any gambling ads during live sports broadcast in these hours. A crackdown on radio and gambling ads during school drop off and pick up times. Importantly, no more celebrities and sports stars featuring in gambling ads. That was a big thing. Online gambling ads banned Unless the user is verified as over 18. There is obviously going to be a few wrinkles in terms of how that's going to work out. Also a crackdown on ads specifically aimed at sports fans telling you things that like you can beat the odds. And also uniforms and sports venues are no longer allowed to be splattered with gambling ads. So you're not going to see those ads inside the stadium. You're not going to see them on the NRL team's jersey.
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D
We are getting the balance right, letting adults have a punt if they want to, but making sure that our children don't see betting ads everywhere they look making because we don't want kids growing up thinking that footy and gambling are inextricably linked.
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C
All of that is part of the package that the government is going to introduce. Obviously they haven't actually brought the legislation forward. So We're a bit thin on the real specific detail right now, but that's supposed to be introduced next month.
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B
Okay. Wow, that's pretty sweeping. So, I guess tell us the lay of the land. I mean, why did something need to change? Why had there been discussion over this for really years?
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C
Well, there's a few things. The first is that Australia historically has just a well documented problem with gambling. I mean, we lose something like 3, 30 billion dollars a year. Sorry, I said 3, 30 billion dollars a year in gambling. And that obviously comes from a lot of different sources. The pokey machines that are ubiquitous in clubs and pubs, particularly in Sydney, are a big source of that. But the saturation of gambling advertising during live sport is, I think, a big part of that problem. I think it sort of also normalises gambling in a way that maybe drives people to later go the pokies. And obviously, because sport is such a big part of Australian culture, with the NRL and the afl, because gambling advertisements are sort of such a big cornerstone of that, it does become really normalized. And I think it is kind of entwined with the fact that we have such high gambling losses compared to other countries in the world. We also don't have something like a national gambling regulator as well to kind of crack down on that. So there is a kind of regulatory thinness around how we tackle it. And I think the other part of this as well is that for a lot of people, those ads have just become super annoying. I mean, you can't watch a game without getting bombarded with these really goofy little, whatever, animated figures or just AI slop, or even like celebrities, the likes of, even people like Samuel L. Jackson. Hello. I'd like to tell you about bet365.com, the world's biggest online sports betting company. So you've just got so many ads every time you watch anything. And I think that that was actually part of sort of moving the community and creating an environment where the government could feel comfortable making this change. Because I think that a lot of people watching games are just like, I've had enough of this. And I mean, I even had people in the industry saying that maybe, you know, groups like Sports Bet had just gone way too far in terms of just plastering themselves all over the AFL and the nrl. And I think punters are starting to just find it a bit irritating. So you've got, on the one hand, well documented harms of gambling. I think lots of people know people who have been in the throes of gambling addiction. It's Very socially destructive. You've got this widespread normalisation of sports betting and you've got this widespread normalisation to the extent that it's starting to piss people off. And there you go.
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B
And in terms of the destruction, just. Just a bit on that, I mean, it's. I mean, how bad is it? I guess, I mean, we do hear of people losing their homes, losing their families, means of supporting themselves. Does it. Does it go further than that in terms of the documented harm in our community?
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C
Well, look, I mean, we do have that kind of larger data about how much people are kind of losing through gambling. And, I mean, on the anecdotal level, yeah, you do hear these stories, particularly from gambling advocates of people who did, you know, decimate their finances because they became addicted to sports betting, to pokies. I mean, at the end of the day, these are highly addictive products, right? They're designed to be addictive because they want you to keep coming back, even though a lot of them are whacked with that little disclaimer about how, you know, you lose more than you win. And of course, there are lots of people who have a pretty healthy relationship with gambling. But I think at the point at which you've got something that is addictive and you're showing those ads in places where impressionable young people without their frontal cortex fully developed yet are likely to encounter it, that's where you start, you know, really encountering a problem.
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B
Now, you sort of alluded to it a little bit beforehand in terms of perhaps the wider community being in support of a crackdown on gambling ads. But let's get into the timing a little bit more because, of course, a lot of us will remember in the lead up to the federal election last year that this. This was a massive political issue and there was strong public support back then, and yet no action from the government. So what has changed? Like, why is the government acting now?
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C
Well, I mean, there are a couple of things to tease out there. Firstly, you had the report put together by the late Labor MP Peter Murphy. This was a bipartisan report that was released in 2023. Peter Murphy died six months later of cancer. And her final political act was this large report. You win some, you lose more. You win some, you lose more. For free and confidential support, call the number on the screen or visit the website, which had 31 recommendations, including a total ban on online gambling advertising. And that report was really picked up on by advocates as sort of the impetus for the labor government to do something between now and then. Obviously, you had A federal election. And even after the report, there was a sense that the Albanese government wasn't going to do anything until after the election. Then last year, they win a very large majority, so there is really a kind of mandate for them to do a lot of the things that they've said they're going to do. I would say Albanese's prime Ministership both before and even after that big landslide election win, has been characterised by a real sense of, I would say, risk aversion. He often seems like he doesn't want to make too many enemies. I think that's a reasonable analysis. But I think that for the government, you know, they did feel like they had to do something. The moral case for doing something has been really strong. Peter Murphy, before her death, did articulate that moral case very clearly. And it clearly reflects the wishes of a huge amount of the labor rank and file. It also reflects the wishes of the crossbench. And you even had the Liberals coming out after Albanese's announcement last week saying this was long overdue. So at this point, you have a fair degree of political willpower in favour of making the change. You have the community on board. It's pretty low risk for the Albanese government to move now and I think that's probably a big reason why they did it when they did it.
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B
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I know there was so much backlash against him not acting. I actually interviewed the author, Michael Lewis, last year. He wrote that book Moneyball, and of course is completely across baseball, gambling in particular. And when I asked him whether he thought our Prime Minister was gutless if he hadn't enacted these reforms, which he'd said he was going to, he said, yes, he was gutless. Why let these people advertise? And he was sort of saying that they've seen it go off the rails in the United States and that it's causing huge, huge sort of health problems there, essentially with all the gambling addiction. But tell us, I guess, about the other side of the coin, and by that I mean the gambling lobby. How powerful is it in Australia and how does that power play out, you know, with regards to donations or other factors that are sort of, I guess, involved in this space?
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C
Well, it's hard to really identify one gambling lobby per se, and that's because gambling is so closely entwined with sports and entertainment in Australia. So, for example, the free to air TV companies derive a huge amount of revenue from gambling advertising. At one point it was, I think, $30 million a year for each of the main free to air networks, and that was cut down a little bit after the Murphy Report. And obviously those free to air networks are likely to, you know, consider that they might feel some future pain because of the government's reforms. At the same time, the big sporting codes, you know, obviously also get a lot of revenue out of TV deals with those free to air networks. So they also have an incent to not have kind of a crackdown on gambling advertising. So you've got the betting companies who are obviously very wealthy, you've got the free to air TV networks who are quite influential as well. And then you've got the sporting cos who are also quite influential and wealthy and flex their muscle in all kinds of different ways. So you've got this kind of trifecta of influence groups who are very good at getting their way. And you saw that when the government was kind of considering how it was going to respond to the recommendations in the Murphy Report. You saw aggressive lobbying from the AFL boss Andrew Dillon, from Peter Verlanders, from the NRL to kind of push the government behind closed doors to kind of get their way. I mean, Peter Verlandis, you know, a character who is good at getting what he wants, who came out and called a reform on gambling advertising nanny state ideology, didn't really kind of hide his views on these things. So look, most of those groups are at the moment, they're sort of still monitoring the situation and assessing their response. But, you know, behind closed doors they have lobbied the government very ferociously and really have exerted their influence in terms of like ensuring that we don't have a complete ban on advertising. After the break, I think protecting the future generation from kind of like feeling that betting is just a normal part of the sporting experience, which for anyone growing up in Australia watching sport, it kind of is because every broadcast is so saturated with gambling. But on the other hand, I worry about as well whether it's a bit of a kind of band aid.
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B
Anti gambling advocates are actually saying that change hasn't gone far enough with this announcement because it does not touch online gambling advertising. That was of course, a key recommendation in the late Peter Murphy's gambling reform report that you spoke about before. So how much backlash, I guess is there already perhaps to Albanese's announcement in terms of it not going far enough?
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C
Yeah, look, anti gambling advocates are disappointed with the reforms that have been announced and I would say anti gambling advocates were probably always going to be disappointed because I don't think at any point in the last few years, if you'd been watching the situation unfold. If you'd been watching the lobbying and watching how the politics had played out and watching how the government had been handling this with extreme caution, it was clear that they weren't going to go as far as that report ever wanted. So I think those advocates were always going to be disappointed. The second thing to note here is that there is still a little bit of I guess fuzziness around the details of this like how does this affect like streaming, how does that play into it? I mean obviously a lot of people now watch the footy through like KO or watch like Stan Sports and stuff like that to watch this sport. So how does that work? Also the 8:30pm cutoff time, I mean state of origin kicks off at 8 o', clock, right? Yeah, you've got a few more hours. You can saturate it with ads and that. So you know, you can see why anti gambling advocates are probably a little disappointed. But I think everyone at this point the big codes are also saying we want to wait and see and wait for more detail. But you know, I also think once something's introduced to the Parliament often there are kind of amendments that get introduced. There's a bit of wheeling and dealing when it goes to the Senate but I think on this, on this one there's a lot of support across both sides of politics for it. So I think Albanese is introducing it because he thinks it's relatively risk free at the moment.
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B
Interesting. I just wanted to ask you about two recommendations that were in the Peter Murphy report that are not covered as far as we know with Albanese's announcement. So one is to create a national gambling regulator, you said that, you know, well we obviously don't have one and other countries do. And of course she also barracked for, and the report recommended a phasing in of a total ad blackout. Now the total ad blackout you could argue, okay, that's full on. But a national gambling regulator, I would have thought that that was just common sense. Like is it crazy that we don't have a national gambling regulator?
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C
Yeah, look, the United Kingdom I believe has something like that. We don't. We have far greater gambling losses than the UK does and I think we have a far greater social problem with gambling than the United Kingdom does. On the other hand, maybe to play devil's advocate, I know another regulator, another body, another sort of bit of chunk of red tape can be difficult to implement but you know, yeah, I think that was a big thing that advocates are disappointed by and probably an opportunity. But sometimes even just like setting up and staffing those kinds of agencies can be quite difficult. But yeah, I think in terms of just aligning every different state that would have been quite beneficial potentially. Yeah.
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B
Tell us about the implications on media companies and sporting clubs once advertising drops off. Like how much money will they lose and what might the consequences be?
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C
Yeah, so media companies obviously are operating in an environment where the advertising market is challenged. But gambling advertising is pretty lucrative for free to wear television. As I said before, it was about 30 million each year that 7, 10 and 9 used to receive in terms of gambling advertising revenue. That's a sort of industry insider estimate though, you know, it's not a nailed down figure but that's a kind of sense of how the kind of sums that we're talking about. Media companies have already said they want some kind of compensation from the government, so moves around like kind of lobbying social media giants for payments and things like that that they've been talking to the government about. I think a lot of those companies were a little bit blindsided that Albanese made the announcement without any sort of sense of what they were going to do to help those companies fill that black hole. Obviously those discussions will be ongoing, closed doors and we will likely see something in the future. But that was something that I think made big media companies a little bit irritated once that announcement was made. Onto the sporting side of things, I mean, we talked about Peter Verlandis before. He is currently seeking a new TV rights deal for the NRL. He wants $4 billion over five years. One of Peter Valandis great motivators is beating the Victorians, whether in his racing, whether he's wearing his racing hat or his rugby league hat. The AFL got a $4.5 billion deal over seven years. So Verlandis obviously would like to beat that deal. He's talked a big game about the prospects of doing that. The question now is that when the media companies are now facing sort of a potential revenue decline, whether he'll be able to get that deal. I mean, you know, Velandes is always an optimistic sort. So we'll see what that means for the NRL deal. But obviously the current deal expires at the end of next year. So that is kind of the more pressing one for them. And it'll be really interesting to see what kind of agreement the NRL can reach with the media companies.
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B
And I mean, do you think though that people listening who, you know, aren't members of a media company and they're not, you know, they're not Peter Verlandis, do you think they're thinking, well, so what, you know, surely that, you know, these people can make money from other streams of revenue and not off the back of gambling. You know, something that our colleague Peter Fitzsimons calls filthy money. So, like, is it a cry me a river sort of situation or am I just being brutal here, Kishore?
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C
Oh, I mean, look, it's, yeah, maybe it's a situation of playing the world's tiniest violin. I mean, I mean, people have talked about the analogies between this and like, tobacco advertising, right? So, look, you know what, maybe this is pushing companies into the future. It's definitely true that the rate of gambling advertising on our screens was unsustainable and there was always going to have to be a point at which we cut down on that. So I don't think the average punter feels a great deal of sympathy for these very wealthy sporting codes and feels much sympathy for the gambling companies that at the end of the day are making a lot of money on the back of something that is causing a huge amount of social harm. So. So, you know, yeah, it's hard to feel too much sympathy for them.
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B
And I guess just to wrap up Kishore, is the implication, like, if we don't do something, is sort of the, the real sharp end of this, that there'll be this ongoing link between children in particular and sports wagering? Because I know that we've seen some analysis that that's what this crackdown at the end of the day is really about, breaking the link between children and sports wagering. So is that what's kind of up for grabs here?
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C
Absolutely. I think protecting the future generation from kind of like feeling that betting is just a normal part of the sporting experience, which for anyone growing up in Australia watching sport, it kind of is because every broadcast is so saturated with gambling. But on the other hand, I worry as well if whether it's a bit of a kind of band aid, because, you know, the way children, young people are engaging with any form of entertainment, it's not through a free to air television broadcast. Right. And even, even watching sport over streaming is probably just like a fraction of how they're consuming media. And I think that there are obviously ways that gambling is promoted online that is probably going to go directly to them in a way that bypasses regulators. Look, I think getting fewer ads on television is probably a good way to start and trying to kind of cut down on that is something, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more.
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B
So cutting ads on social media, that's the gambling ads on social media, that's. That's the next.
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C
The next phase, maybe, but it's a lot harder to do.
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B
It is. Well, it's an important topic.
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A
So thanks so much, Kishore, for your time.
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C
Thanks, Sam. My pleasure.
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A
Today's episode was produced by Josh Towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. And our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Martin coxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the Morning Edition and leave a review for
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B
us on Apple or Spotify.
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A
Thanks for listening.