Australia

Copying a post I did earlier in the week:

That 4 corners report was a bit of an eye opener.

I hadn't realised that eg, Football Australia had signed contracts with sports betting related companies, and that they actually get a cut of each bet. And "The NRL earnt 50 million dollars last year from this agreement. It takes a 1-point-2 per cent commission from every bet in Australia on its games, more for riskier bets and gambling on big games like the State of Origin and finals. On some bets … the NRL can take 17.5 per cent of a bookmaker's profit."

They won't want to do anything to reduce gambling. They are incentivised to increase gambling !!

I find it interesting that most people don't believe me that Australia is the largest gambling nation per capita. Even after I pull out my phone and show them the stats they don't believe me.

Gambling ads around sport are an issue, but it's just one part of a larger culture of ignoring gambling in our environment. We have gotten so used to ignoring the pokies in every pub and club sucking cash out of pensioners that we apply it to everything. It is our national shame, so we pretend it's not a thing

I hang around on various sports sites, communities, discussion boards etc.

One thing that bugs the hell out of me is the insidious insertion of betting into sports discussions. These range from "Put $500 on X to score", "Need this team to lose for my multi", to the more subtle "Who is your favourite this season for MVP/Brownlow/DallyM?" Which of course sends a bunch of people to gambling sites to quote the odds, tell you which gambling site gives you the best odds and tell you how much they put on.

Half the time I can't tell if they are astroturfing for betting companies.

Irrespective of the laws, could we take a more proactive stance on discouraging gambling, eg on a community based lemmy server?

In these discussions I always hear people say it's not just Australia, it's the same elsewhere too. I'm traveling in the UK at the moment, and I thought it would be the same, since these betting companies for some bloody reason always have some english or irish accent for the voice over.

But no. I haven't seen a single ad yet, and I've had the TV on in the hotel room almost non-stop. I'm pretty sure there are ads on the sports channels probably. But just watching some random TV shouldn't bombard me with friggen ladbrokes yelling at me.

I'm in the USA next week, and will be interesting to see if they have any betting ads between their ads for opoids and guns. 🙃

All gambling adds should be banned full stop.

Shit go further and make every betting company use some sort of “plain packaging” method in regards to website branding, company name, etc