In an interview with ABC Radio National’s Steve Cannane, Kai Cantwell, CEO of Responsible Wagering Australia, warned that blanket bans on gambling ads could endanger Australian gamblers by pushing them to illegal operators. The push to ban gambling ads completely was recently reignited when anonymous sources revealed the Albanese Government might not implement all 31 proposals from the Murphy Report, and could instead go with caps and a ban on gambling ads on social media.
Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA) is a lobby group that represents five major gambling companies that are licensed to operate in Australia. Its member operators include prominent names like bet365 and Unibet.
The Risk of Allowing Australia’s Illegal Gambling Market to Grow
According to Kai Cantwell, gamblers might turn to offshore operators should blanket bans on ads be implemented. In Norway, he argued, illegal wagering reportedly makes up 66% of the country’s gambling market, and a similar problem has been observed in Spain and other jurisdictions with similar regulations. Moreover, offshore gambling is already a problem in Australia, and according to Mr Cantwell, unlicensed operators offer no consumer protections nor contribute towards Australia’s economy.
Steve Cannane brought up that the issue was addressed in the “You win some, you lose more” report. According to the committee’s findings, “dire predictions” regarding similar regulations in Spain were not realised. Mr Cantwell, however, said that a substantial portion of the revenue from Spanish gambling goes to illegal offshore operators.
When asked whether gambling was increasingly normalised among children, Mr Cantwell said he disagreed but that more could be done to ensure their exposure to ads was prevented. He further stressed the importance of stopping offshore casinos from targeting children with ads when Mr Cannane pointed out that according to Professor Samantha Thomas, research has shown ads lead to children having a positive perception of gambling.
While Mr Cantwell stressed that the RWA was in favour of measures such as staff training, regulations regarding offshore operators, and the establishment of a national regulator, he cautioned against a blanket ban on inducements as that, too, risked encouraging bettors to wager on illegal websites that offer substantial promotions.
Media Companies’s Reliance on Gambling Ad Revenue and David Pocock’s Stance on the Matter
Cabinet Minister Bill Shorten also expressed concerns about the blanket ban during an airing of ABC’s Q+A programme. His worries were tied to how free-to-air TV was “disrupted by the internet” and how it could be affected by the ban. “Free-to-air media is in diabolical trouble,” he stressed.
David Pocock, Independent Senator for the ACT, went live on ABC Radio on Tuesday, and he essentially dismissed the concerns of both Kai Cantwell and Bill Shorten. He described the potential problems surrounding offshore operators as “excuses,” arguing that international examples have actually reinforced the need for a complete ban and that partial measures have historically proven ineffective or have led to an increase in content that promoted gambling. He did not neglect to point out that there is no push for gambling itself to be prohibited but that the core issue was about “stopping the inundation, the total saturation of online and TV advertising.” As Australians lose the most money on gambling per year (AU$25 billion), he expressed that he found it concerning that three out of four Australians believe “betting is a normal part of enjoying sport.”
When speaking about media companies and Bill Shorten’s warnings, Mr Pocock told Steve Cannane that no such concerns were brought up by representatives of Australian media when the “You win some, you lose more” inquiry was being conducted. He also expressed that while free TV should be looked after, this should not come at the cost of failure to “tackle social harm.” A focus was also placed on how only AU$186 million of the AU$3.2 billion Australian media earned from advertising was attributed to the promotion of gambling. “This is not something we can’t solve,” he stressed.
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Daniel Williams
