Labor’s Gambling Ad Ban Is a Joke

If you’ve been watching the Socceroos in the World Cup on SBS expecting to see football like me, you’ll know what I’m talking about. A barrage of gambling ads!

According to analysis from the ABC, more than one in every three ads during SBS’s Socceroos coverage promoted online gambling. That’s on an Australian taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, and after the Albanese Government proudly announced its long-awaited gambling advertising reforms! If this is what a crackdown looks like, I’d hate to see doing nothing.

The Government says it’s taking “strong action” to protect Australians from gambling harm. Yet TV coverage in Australia of one of the biggest sporting events on Earth remains saturated with gambling promotions. The contradiction couldn’t be clearer.

Australia has a gambling problem

Australians lose more money gambling per person than almost any other country in the world. That’s not because Australians are uniquely irresponsible. It’s because we’ve created one of the most heavily marketed and accessible gambling environments anywhere.

Gambling is no longer confined to casinos or the local pub. It sits in our pockets, available 24 hours a day through smartphones. It’s woven into our sporting culture. Odds are discussed before games. Commentary is sponsored by betting companies. Children grow up seeing gambling presented as part of being a sports fan.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t simply entertainment. Gambling harm is recognised as a major public health issue. Research links harmful gambling with financial stress, relationship breakdown, family violence, depression, anxiety and suicide. The damage extends well beyond the person placing the bet. Families lose homes, savings disappear, relationships collapse and children experience neglect and insecurity.

Australian researchers estimate that almost 200,000 Australian children live in families affected by moderate-risk or problem gambling. Those children didn’t choose to gamble, but they live with its consequences. Less money for school lunches and excursions. Parents dealing with financial stress.

Advertising isn’t harmless

The gambling industry likes to argue that advertising merely encourages people to switch brands. The evidence shows the opposite. The Australian Institute of Family Studies found that greater exposure to betting advertising is associated with riskier gambling behaviour and higher levels of gambling-related harm. People who are exposed to betting advertisements more frequently are more likely to bet and more likely to experience gambling problems.

Children are particularly vulnerable. Study after study has shown that children who watch sport can readily identify betting companies, remember their slogans and associate gambling with the excitement, fun and identity of their favourite teams. Researchers warn that this normalises gambling long before young people are legally old enough to place a bet. That’s exactly how advertising works. Advertising doesn’t exist because companies enjoy spending billions of dollars. It exists because it changes behaviour.

We’ve seen this movie before

The tobacco industry once made many of the same arguments. It claimed advertising didn’t increase smoking. It simply encouraged smokers to change brands. Governments eventually recognised that argument for what it was. Australia progressively banned tobacco advertising from television, radio, newspapers, magazines, sporting sponsorships and public events. Those restrictions weren’t the only reason smoking rates fell, but they formed an important part of one of the world’s most successful public health campaigns, alongside taxation, plain packaging, education and quit programs.

No serious public health expert today argues we should bring cigarette advertising back. Why? Because repeated exposure normalises harmful behaviour, particularly for children. The same public health principles apply to gambling.

Systematic reviews of international evidence conclude that restricting gambling advertising reduces gambling harm, especially among children, young people and vulnerable groups. But it also shows that partial restrictions create loopholes and shift the advertising and its impacts elsewhere. This is precisely the problem with Labor’s reforms.

A policy full of loopholes

The Government acknowledges that gambling advertising causes harm. But acknowledging a problem isn’t the same as solving it. It’s reforms introduce selective restrictions on advertising, celebrity endorsements and children’s exposure. But they stop well short of the landmark recommendations made by the late Peta Murphy’s bipartisan parliamentary inquiry. That inquiry recommended a comprehensive ban on online gambling advertising.

Instead, Australia has received a patchwork of restrictions that still allows viewers watching the World Cup or anything else on SBS and commercial TV to be bombarded with betting promotions. (Oh, and giving viewers the option to opt out of gambling ads which SBS now does, isn’t meaningful reform. Public health shouldn’t depend on people navigating menus and changing settings. We don’t ask families to opt out of cigarette advertising. We ban it because the harm is well established.)

When one in every three advertisements during Australia’s biggest football tournament is for gambling, ordinary Australians don’t see reform. They see business as usual.

Time to put public health ahead of betting profits

This isn’t about whether adults should be free to gamble. They should. It’s about whether billion-dollar gambling companies should be free to relentlessly market addictive products that cause harm.

We’ve already answered that question for cigarettes. We don’t allow tobacco companies to plaster cricket matches and football broadcasts with cigarette advertisements because we know advertising influences behaviour and causes harm. The same logic should apply to gambling.

If Australia genuinely wants to reduce gambling harm, protect children and stop normalising betting as part of sport, we need to stop pretending that weak restrictions are meaningful reform. Because if more than one-third of the advertisements during the World Cup are still for online gambling, this isn’t a crackdown. It’s a loophole.

This is what Australia’s World Cup looked like online: news about the Socceroos surrounded by Sportsbet promotions. If this is a gambling advertising crackdown, it’s hard to see it.