The Australian government has announced gambling advertising reforms | Hacker News Reader

The Australian government has announced gambling advertising reforms

bbc.com

133 pointsgostsamo103 comments

Finally.

The deluge of gambling ads on TV during Friday night footy is absolutely appalling. There’s a very robust conduit for normalising sports gambling through advertisements around the broadcasts and it’s clearly influencing young adults. I’ve noticed a dramatic uptick in how common it is compared to when I was that age.

I see absolutely no upside for a society to allow sports betting. The tax revenues don't justify the addiction, debts and devastated families.

An argument I've heard is that by legalizing betting, it can be more easily monitored with regulation and reduce the amount of black market betting. People still bet when it's illegal, it just becomes harder to track, which makes it easier for gamblers to interfere with outcomes without detection.

It sounds kind of similar to the legalization of certain recreational drugs. For example, alcohol prohibition resulted in a massive black market with organized criminal gangs, and many places realized it's better to regulate it rather than prohibit it.

I think for gambling, we need better regulations, and the Australian government seems to think so too.

Almost nobody was betting in the black market before the legalization. Sure you obviously had some people, but friction was big enough where it was not worth it. Right now, there isn’t a single game where people are talking about the bets they made in NA.

Nothing should be black and white. Even for alcohol and drug abuse, we should look at each and evaluate.

I don't know about Australia but there was an enormous amount of black market sports gambling in the USA before it was widely legalized. People who were unaware of this were just oblivious or led very sheltered lives. Broad legalization may have been a net negative for society but it's a complex issue.

define enormous? before it was legalized I knew one mate that was a gambler. I don’t have a friend anymore who does not sports gamble, hardly have relatives that don’t sports gamble. die-hard fans of teams now don’t give a hoot if the team wins (especially in the regular season)… not saying this is not a complicated issue but to say market was enormous is very much removed from reality

Yep it's hard to build a large liquid market for both sides of the bet without a central platform being legal. Look at polymarket as another example of things that people wouldn't bet on if a (legal in some countries) platform didn't exist.

Very few people gambled illegally. Putting some gangster out of business (Lol if you actually believe that) at the cost of addicting the entire working class to throwing away their money is bad math!

Sorry, but what?

Illegal gambling has been rife for a very long time - the bookie down the pub taking bets on horses, games, whatever

Add to that that the Costigan Commission (1984) and the Fitzgerald Inquiry (1989) proved that illegal gambling was the foundational "river of gold" for organised crime in Australia.

Illegal gambling at its peak was nothing compared to every store, restaurant and smartphone being a casino, advertised right out in the open.

True - legalisation increased total gambling.

But your original claim was 'very few gambled illegally' which the historical record contradicts.

The Costigan and Fitzgerald inquiries showed illegal gambling wasn't just widespread - the profits funded other organised crime including the heroin trade.

We can debate whether legalisation was net positive without rewriting that history.

So how wide spread was it?

Like is there a graph of illegal gambling participation by pop over time?

I've run in many different circles in my life and I've never really come across any sort of illegal gambling.

I know it exists[0], it just honestly doesn't seem very common.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59JkkMBpQtU

> Illegal bookmaking (SP)/Race fixing

> The race track, it appears, is a great meeting place for criminals. The Costigan Royal Commission (Australia 1984), the Connor Inquiry (Victoria 1983), the Moffit Royal Commission (New South Wales 1974) and the Fitzgerald Inquiry (Queensland 1989) revealed that a vast network of SP bookmakers exists throughout Australia. They found the monetary flow in the industry huge, and as such has the potential to finance many other illegal activities.

> Mr Justice Moffit warned that there was evidence to indicate that SP syndicates were in contact with major heroin smugglers and domestic drug distributors (New South Wales 1974).

> Connor estimated that the annual turnover for SP bookmaking was $1800 million in New South Wales and $1000 million in Victoria. Connor has said of illegal bookmaking: >> Illegal bookmaking is a multimillion dollar industry run by people who can get up to forty or fifty telephones and who, if their telephones are closed down, can get them in new premises a week later. Illegal bookmakers prosper, making millions of illegal dollars, simply because they do not pay income tax or betting taxes (Victoria 1983a, vol. 2, ch. 14).[0]

McMillen, J. (1996). "Gambling Cultures: Studies in History and Interpretation."

This academic study explains that SP bookmaking was a "submerged" culture. It operated through "runners" in pubs and massive illegal telephone exchanges. If you weren't a "punter" or part of that specific working-class pub culture, the infrastructure was invisible by design to avoid police detection. (unfortunately I cannot link you to a direct copy - but https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/97802039935... )

[0]https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tandi024....

https://henley.austlii.edu.au/au/other/cth/AURoyalC/1984/2.p... (It's a prick of a thing to search, but the phrase "River of gold" was used to describe the profits the union was taking from illegal gambling)

Dont be dense, we are talking about "very few" in the context of draft kings which prints more money in 1 week than black market gambling has in years. The turnover in legal sports gambling in america is over 100b a year, this is larger than the gdp of most countries.

Yeah these people have no idea what they are talking about, you’re correct.

my grandma is not going to be looking for a black market bookie. some percentage of people will be no matter what though if you make penalties really severe you will significantly thin out this crowd.

without gambling though, pat mahomes would be making less money that I am making…

> without gambling though, pat mahomes would be making less money that I am making…

It's not like he was broke when it was just beer and crypto ads. He made 10 million dollars his rookie year in the NFL before SCOTUS federally legalized gambling.

you take away sports gambling and his rookie salary will be $50k :)

Some amount? Sure. But not at this scale.

If people were just going to do it anyway, these gambling companies wouldn’t be pouring billions into advertising to stimulate demand

Many dangerous things are legal simply because “people enjoy doing them” though.

People die during parachuting and climbing mount everest. What's the upside really beyond “People enjoy doing it and it's their own life.”?

Meanwhile we keep truly destructive things like alcohol legalized...

For the freedom of normal folks to have 1 beer, 25% of the population is drinking 78% of the consumed alcohol.[1]

And before anyone brings up that myth there is no beneficial dose of alcohol. Even in the pro-wine studies it's been found that the benefit was just the fact it was grapes and that eating/drinking the grapes without fermentation is superior.

[1] https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/alcohol-sales-...

I think even the biggest hard drugs should be legal, again just because “people enjoy it”.

I'm fine with taxing it more in subsidized single-payer healthcare systems though but I also feel that should be done more consistently. I for instance also believe that say high heels should be taxed more because they're bad for one's health for similar reasons or unhealthy food but that's not “socially controversial” enough for that I get which is ultimately what it's always about. “health” is always just an excuse.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Gambling addiction impacts those around the person. They may deprive their dependents of opportunity and care. They may gamble away savings and require further support from the public purse. They may even steal (e.g. taking money from loved ones).

In many non-US countries, we consider the second-order effects due to having inviolable public safety nets. People who are their own victims due to vice are still afforded care because they’re still humans and citizens. That’s why we try to dissuade falling into those vices in the first place.

The same can be said for anything that's dangerous. In fact, one can make this argument simply for people who elect to study some field that isn't really very financially viable.

It's fun and increases engagement with watching sports, being invested with what happens.

As a case study look at the impact sites like CSGOLounge had on the popularity of competitive CSGO.

As an avid follower of pro CSGO and CS2, I don’t doubt any of that. You’ll note I don’t advocate to ban gambling.

However, vices all come with negative aspects and it’s on us to discuss what the right overall balance is. IMO, when it comes to sports gambling advertisement, it’s way too freely available and normalised.

I’d also like to see a dramatic reduction of pokies (there’s an ABCA article from 2020 that I can’t currently find covering how much money Aussies saved by not being able to play them during lockdown, it’s staggering), but simultaneously fear for the mass closure of sports clubs and other third space venues if it were to happen. It’s a balancing act.

But at least for pokies, they’re deliberately walled away from the restaurant areas, etc. With TV ads, any easily-influenced kid watching their sporting heroes is exposed to this. It’s normalised along watching the sport itself. It’s no surprise there’s a direct conduit from that to young adults having gambling problems.

The ads are going to continue from 8:30pm on, NRL has a game starting at 8pm this evening, the gambling ads will hit just before half time under this new legislation

From TFA:

“TV ads from betting agencies will be capped at three per hour, between 6am and 8:30pm, and banned completely from any live sports broadcasts during those hours”

I read that as even after 8:30pm, they’re still banned during live sports broadcasts. So none of this half-time odds update or whatever.

I nicknamed ESPN in the US EBetPN

That's a nice start but it's really just a band aid over the real problem, kind of like how politicians don't actually want to solve the underlying issue but instead just want to be seen to do something.

The real insanity is just gambling in Australia. As the article mentioned the people in the country have the highest losses to gambling anywhere in the world. This goes beyond sports betting, as that is just the latest thing, to poker machines (slot machines for you USA people) and other online gambling (cough Kick & related companies cough).

I am old enough to remember the introduction of poker machines in pubs and clubs here in Australia and it was always framed as a personal choice and government revenue source but all it did was result in money going from families to the big corporate "entertainment venue" operators (pub and club owners). I'd love it if Australia got rid of all gambling from normal parts of society and limited it to strictly regulated casinos (at most), but the gambling industry is so firmly entrenched in politics and society that I don't see any change happening soon

I think we must be of a similar generation, I also remember being a kid seeing those stupid ads with celebrities “bending their finger”. It’s really gross to think how normalised gambling is.

There is another side to this though, and that’s our pub culture and how “big gambling” plays a role in keeping pubs financially viable with the help of pokies. In the wise words of Tim Whitlam, “Blow up the pokies”

Bold move limiting gambling ads to just three per hour. Next up light-touch bans on cigarettes where you can only smoke during ad breaks.

The ability for Sportsbet to deluge your feed with gambling remains unhindered. Their TikTok/Instagram ads are clever and unrelenting.

As a consequence there is a quiet crisis in young people, 18-30, deeply in debt, working second and third jobs so that they have a bit more money to gamble.

> As a consequence there is a quiet crisis in young people, 18-30, deeply in debt, working second and third jobs so that they have a bit more money to gamble.

Do you have a source for this?

I have relatives who work in retail, and they says it's endemic. Bunnings workers, KFC crew, etc.

I'd strongly support a year-based ban on cigarette purchases.

Set the purchase birth year to the current age 18. So DOB 2008 if done today, if you're born 2009 or later you can't buy smokes at all ever.

Within two generations we'd largely eliminate smoking. Within three cigarettes would be amongst impossible to get. Great public health initiative.

NZ tried that cigarette ban, but walked it back so they could get juicy tax revenues. https://lite.cnn.com/2023/11/28/asia/new-zealand-smoking-ban...

Maybe split the difference and raise the purchasing age for cigarettes 6 months every year. Takes longer to get to nobody can smoke, but you'll get there eventually.

We’d just end up in the same situation as Australia - where up to one third of all cigarettes consumed are purchased on the black market.

if this source is to be trusted it's now half https://wrdnews.org/illicit-tobacco-in-australia-half-of-all...

(I did not vet anything, I just googled your words because I wanted to know more)

It’s likely a lot more than half.

The (NZ) government that changed the approach is heavily loaded with Tobacco friendly Ministers - the expectation is that when the government is voted out (no government lasts forever) the age based approach will be bought back in.

Smoking is out of favor and has been for years. Every year that goes by there are less smokers. Eventually there will be so few that the tax revenues don't matter anymore. I can't guess when that is coming though.

It was, but vape use has taken over, and once the nicotine addiction is in place people are open to smoking again.

Also, they tried taxing cigarettes to the moon in Australia and created a multi billion dollar black market for them instead.

US has gone to a minimum age of 21. I actually think that’s enough, along with raising the price and reducing the number of places people can smoke.

People generally start smoking by their teens or not at all. Making it hard for kids to get exposed to nicotine will stop a lot of addiction.

Also way fewer parents have cigarettes in the house so it’s harder for kids to grab them at home. And there are pretty strong taboos nowadays about giving random kids stuff they’re not supposed to have.

> can't buy smokes at all ever

They can, they will be available on the black market along with every other widely used illicit recreational drug.

Banning tobacco won't make the problem disappear, people want their poison, including sensible rational people who accept the risks and use in moderation.

Banning tobacco will push it underground, giving criminals a new revenue stream which can fund more harmful activities.

Not only will the govt lose out on tobacco tax, they may have to ramp up law enforcement expense to crack down on the now illicit tobacco trade and ever more empowered criminals.

Users of the black market products will have no guarantee of quality assurance, products may contain additional harmful additives.

There's an optimal level of tax and regulation to keep distribution out of criminal control, educate the general public, and offer support to the serious victims, all the while collecting tax to fund these activities.

This is precisely what many countries are already doing to varying degrees.

And the same argument can be made for many vices, including gambling and alcohol.

The UK is supposedly doing exactly this. As are a few other places.

Would you support the same ban for alcohol?

I would but the rest of Australia wouldn't. This country has an unhealthy drinking problem.

Can we please not keep trying to redo prohibition. Yes it costs public health. No you can’t stop adults imbibing the drugs they want, the only thing you can do is criminalise it which makes criminals of sick people. Great work.

I smoke maybe a pack a year at best. I can’t buy smokes because some nuffies don’t like it? Take a hike.

So it would be a small personal sacrifice for huge societal benefit, and you wouldn’t even do that?

The societal downside of providing yet another revenue stream for criminal organisations seems like it might be worth taking into consideration.

Actually happening in Australia, almost any smoker buys illegally imported cigarettes at a quarter of the price ($10/15ish vs $50/$60) a pack. Pure government tax hikes created the most ripe opportunity for criminal orgs in such a long time.

No.

Ireland needs this. I don’t live there anymore, but the amount of ads literally everywhere you go there these days is insane.

Gambling ruins lives.

A great first step. I'd love to see a sin tax associated with this as well - ie, for adverts that do run, they should have to pay a % of the ad fee to the government.

I don't think people understand just how ingrained in the culture gambling is in Australia. One of the primary 3rd spaces for people in Australia are RSLs, which are technically clubs for veterans to get co-op like services, but have evolved into a 3rd space for everyone that offer food, alcohol, entertainment, and of course, sports gambling and "pokies" (poker/slot machines).

As a West Australian this is so interesting to me, because gambling culture is extremely niche here - but WA law is that pokies are only allowed at the casino, nowhere else. And thank fuck for that.

That's one of the myths the gambling dens propagate: that they are there for the veterans. There is no technicality about it.

https://www.rslaustralia.org/rsl-sub-branches-and-rsl-clubs-...

The "RSL sub-branch" is a not-for-profit welfare organisation, that looks after veterans. For the most part they are small and if they are lucky they get the use of a meeting room in the RSL club.

The "RSL Club" is a multimillion dollar commercial enterprise that looks after its own interests, conducts political lobbying, makes millions of dollars off gambling addicts and hands out token grants in the community to give the impression that they are there to benefit the community. Typically nothing to do with the RSL sub-branch.

I fashion myself a bit of a fan of football and an occasional F1 viewer, and I must say, every time I watch a live event with friends I can't help but mention how betting houses have completely taken over the advertising space. Betson, Betano, Betway, bet365,etc... that and the pervasive Crypto.com it is unbelievable how they are trying to find a niche in this demographic. The crypto ones are the best, it's like they are not even trying to hide the nature of the business any more.

I'm from italy where we have a ban.

Some companies now make advertisements of news websites that it is clear are also part of betting companies. For example, https://www.admiralbet.news/ has as other Google result the betting website. However, I do have to say it is still less than before and it's much better

"TV ads from betting agencies will be capped at three per hour, between 6am and 8:30pm"

-----------

And thus, the ten minute Australian gambling ad was born.

> "Today it's gambling advertising, tomorrow it's alcohol, then it's sugary drinks, fast food, critical minerals and who knows what else comes next," chief executive Kai Cantwell said.

We have already learned our lesson. Prohibition doesn’t work. But advertising does work. Banning advertising also works. We should allow people the freedom to participate in vice, but ban all advertising for it. Anything harmful to society should not be advertised. No ads for cars, guns, recreational drugs including alcohol, unhealthy food, fossil fuels, or gambling.

Who knows what comes next Kai? Hopefully everything.

I gotta admit I laughed heartily at the quote. I expected the slippery slope argument, I did not expect it to be made so clumsy :)

btw. what followed is worse: <<He accused the government of blindsiding a sector that supports 30,000 jobs and "provides critical funding to sport, racing and broadcast industries".>>

Gambling business is not a positive force. It's not even zero sum. It's a negative sum game. I hope no one is nodding along to these kind of arguments, they are nonsensical.

“provides critical funding to sport, racing and broadcast industries”

I foresee that the amped-up sports gambling will destroy professional sports as all results will be tainted with the probable interference from the gambling industry and those trying to “game the system” (irony noted).

It’s too late. Professional sports is already ruined by gambling. You don’t always see it in the results but in the weird side bets (how many tackles, home many metres).

It should be more heavily regulated and the advertisements are so blatant and intrusive they ruin any pleasure you might take from watching sport in Australia.

> Prohibition doesn’t work.

Actually, it did work [1]:

> Courtwright’s The Age of Addiction has the statistics: “Per capita consumption initially fell to 30 percent of pre-Prohibition levels, before gradually increasing to 60 or 70 percent by 1933.” That suggests a 30 percent reduction, at a minimum, in consumption — although that was less than the initial effect, as people figured some ways around the law.

> We should allow people the freedom to participate in vice.

There is literally no individual upside to gambling and don't say "winning". For sites like FanDuel and DraftKings, you get banned or your bet sizes severelyl restricted if you consistently win [2]. Why? Because it discourages the marks if they don't win occasionally.

Suicide rate is highest among gambling addicts than any other form of addiction [3]. Gambling measurably increases credit score drops, debts and bankruptcies [4]. The entire business is predatory.

At least back in the day when you had to go to a casino there was some barrier to gambling. Now? Just pull out your phone.

[1]: https://archive.ph/l8m4E#selection-885.0-889.319

[2]: https://www.elitepickz.com/blog/do-sportsbooks-ban-winners-a...

[3]: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/problem-gambl...

[4]: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/online-sports-gamb...

> For sites like FanDuel and DraftKings, you get banned or your bet sizes severelyl restricted if you consistently win

Can confirm this in Australia too. They give you progressively worse odds if you win. And they give you progressively better odds if you keep losing, to keep you coming back.

Today it’s a ban on gambling ads, but tomorrow it’s a ban on mosquitos, cancer, and discrimination.

Listing a bunch of things a lot of people don’t like isn’t a winning argument.

I like the way he included "critical minerals" in this list, sounds like the mining industry also has contributed money to his pocket.

You laugh, but thanks to those critical minerals ads during cartoons, my kids are now begging me for praseodymium and scandium. Prices for rare earths are through the roof but my 10 year old just won't accept that she can't refine advanced alloys in this economy.

If she wants to refine advanced alloys then should look into the environmental regulations first, there's a reason nearly all such processing is done in China, or South East Asia.

If there were ads promoting breeding mosquitos or deliberately inducing cancer, we could look at banning them. But there aren’t so this is a pointless take.

Advertised or not, you can take my breaded mosquitos from my cold, dead hands!

The thing with “harmful to society” is that in practice it's so arbitrarily decided what is “harmful” and in practice it comes down more to “arbitrary moralist reactions”.

People reading this may not realize how pervasive gambling is in Australia thanks to poker machines ("pokies"). These are slot machines, basically. And they're everywhere with one exception: they're illegal outside of casinos in Western Australia.

In every other state, you can walk into many pubs and RSLs ("Retired Servicemen's Leagues", veteran's clubs, basically) and sit there and lose your house. Pokies can be the only thing keeping many businesses in business. They licenses are so valuable that some businesses are bought simply so the licenses can be transferred. Some state governments realize this so reduce the number of licenses on transfer (eg you buy a business wih 20 pokies and you get to transfer 16 and lose 4). This had the predictable outcome of having pokie licenses skyrocket in value.

AFAIK sportsbetting (eg DraftKings) is illegal in Australia because the government has realized how damaging it is yet pokies remain legal.

Oh it's worth adding that Stake, which is headquartered in a shack in Curacao for legal reasons, was started and run by Australians who have absolutely raked in the cash to the point of now being billionaires.

Another problematic part of all this is how gambling has been effectively used for money laundering. The casinos already got hit for allowing this to happen. Pokiies and smaller establishments remain a loophole.

Consider the case of Troy Stolz [1], who leaked documents about ClubsNSW not complying with anti-money laundering and compliance. ClubsNSW was able to bring a private criminal prosecution about this. Youtuber Jordan Shanks-Markovina had his house firebombed (allegedly over this) [2].

Youtuber Boy Boy showed how ridiculously lax AML is with gambling [3].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/07/clubs...

[2]: https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/friendlyj...

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoyH1dgj8Lo

I’m in Melbourne and I honestly haven’t seen any around. I see all this talk about the pubs being full of them but all of the pubs I’ve been to have none.

I’m thinking it must exclusively be an outer suburb thing or places where old people hang out.

RSLs and pub/bistros on shopping centres and along major thoroughfares are the big ones. They're absolutely everywhere, just not traditional pubs in the inner to mid suburbs as much.

I think Crown basically bought up all the licenses in the CBD. I think there might have been one pub at the corner of Williams and Collins or something but the last time I was there it was closed.

Online/App based sports betting is legal in Aus now but only through the existing licensed gaming companies.

> "Today it's gambling advertising, tomorrow it's alcohol, then it's sugary drinks, fast food, critical minerals and who knows what else comes next," chief executive Kai Cantwell said.

Good? I really hope that we are approaching a day when we realize that advertising itself is harmful, and leads to contra-social behavior in general.

Gambling ads are to Australia what Pharmaceutical ads are to the USA.

But unfortunately gambling ads are also to the US what pharmaceutical ads are to the US.

This is all I see on ad supporteed TV at night here in the UK. And half the time during the day. It's a serious problem coupled with, I assume, serious lobbyists here in the UK.

The gambling lobby in the UK is exceptionally well-organised and well-funded, and pays a good few MPs "consultancy fees" to minimise regulation.

Betfair and PaddyPower are owned by the same pair of public school chancers, who are also touted as startup thinkfluencers, and spend a fortune on "sponsorship" of various sporting events.

It's an industry of bottom feeders.

Let's hope that they don't burn someone else's house.

https://youtu.be/ZI3zaHUsgXg

https://youtu.be/jZivPIRvi0U

I wonder how much the business of online ads and gambling gaming (so called social casino) is. What happens if they both get banned? Must cause a huge amount of loss of revenue from the cloud operators at least.

I can't tell if this thread is filled with bookie shills or (buy a mcNuke level)die hard libertarians or people who live under a rock and don't realize how pervasive sports gambling is.

About time man.

Weak reforms, I'm disappointed and will write to my MP to express that sentiment.

Frankly all advertising for gambling on TV, radio, social media, bus stops - everywhere - should be banned the same as we did for cigarette ads in the 90s.

It basically killed a bunch of racing teams that I was a fan of but it needed to be done.

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