It’s official. Australia has a gambling problem. Data released by H2 Gambling Capital, a UK based industry researcher, highlight that Australia loses more money through gambling than any other nation per adult on earth.
The statistics don’t make for pretty reading. Gambling costs an average of $1250 per adult each year, totaling close to $23 billion in 2016.
And it’s growing.
There’s been a 50% increase in sports betting in Australia in the last 5 years.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that sports betting is on the rise, yet Australians have grown accustomed to unrelenting advertisement of bookmakers promoting sports betting on television. Yet the $1 billion lost in sports betting suggest that this casual past time should be of serious concern.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced in May that there would be a complete ban on gambling advertising during live sport before 8.30pm, yet while this is a start to minimizing exposure to the youth of Australia, anti-gambling leaders are suggesting much more needs to be done.
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has suggested a complete ban on sports gambling before 8.30pm, and not just during live sport. While many industry experts agree this solution may decrease exposure to young people watching television, the sheer amount of money that bookmaking companies invest in television rights might make this very difficult to achieve.
The fear of people like Senator Xenophon is that many young Australians are being normalized to associate sport with gambling. However sports gambling has become far more entrenched as a social past time amongst young men than what Xenophon and Turnbull would realize and simply banning advertising will not resolve such a complex issue. For many young men, they would be considered abnormal amongst their friends if they do not partake in sports betting, a very worrying trend.
While the solution is not easily found, further investigation into the factors that influence sports gambling would need to be conducted to halt the vast growth in the industry.
Exposure to gambling amongst youth in Australia is widespread; not only in TAB’s but in all forms of media.
