Insiders have revealed that the biggest crisis in the Australian Football League (AFL) is related to gambling, with both the sport as a whole and some local professional athletes getting more hooked on the various forms of gambling available in the country.
It also became clear that AFL clubs received an amount of almost AU$100 million from poker machines in 2017, at a time when the losses generated by local punters at the gambling venues in the state of Victoria reached a record high in almost a decade.
According to reports, the overall losses on the 26,384 poker machines in the Victorian clubs and pubs rose by AU$86 million to approximately AU$2.7 billion over the 2018 fiscal year. This has been the largest amount of punters’ losses registered since the 2008/2009 fiscal year. According to new figures released by the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR), the poorest communities in the country have been responsible for the largest losses on local poker machines. The biggest chunk of the losses has been generated by punters at the pubs run by ALH Group, a majority-owned subsidiary of the supermarket giant Woolworths.
As revealed by experts, the afore-mentioned AU$86-million increase has been the one to blame for an increase in family breakdown, raising addictions, increased crime levels, etc.
As mentioned above, the nine Australian Football League clubs that own poker machines in the state of Victoria, reaped a massive revenue from the pokies in 2017. According to new statistics, the revenue generated by their poker machines increased by almost 4%, which represented an amount of AU$3.55 million for the period, with the overall revenue amounting to AU$97.5 million.
The Hawthorn Football Club was the AFL team which saw the largest poker machines revenue increase in 2018, with the profit increasing by AU$1 million from AU$23.3 million in 2017 to AU$24.3 million in 2018. The Carlton Football Club saw an AU$800,000 increase in its poker machines revenue from AU$17.6 million in 2017 to AU$18.4 million in 2018. Another AU$1-million increase in the pokie revenue was seen by the Collingwood Football Club, which 2018 poker machine gains amounted to AU$13.2 million in comparison to AU$12.2 million registered in 2017.
More AFL Players Fall Victims to Gambling Addiction
Apart from the massive increase in the poker machines revenue of the AFL clubs, the gambling industry of Australia has been blamed for bringing the so-called “unspoken crisis” to the league. It turns out that not only regular people fall victims to gambling addiction, but also professional athletes such as David Schwarz, who went bankrupt in 2002, with a pending seven-figure debt behind his back.
The now-46-year-old Schwarz has revealed that he lost an amount of over AU$5 million over the course of his 12-year career while being one of the all-time stars of Australian sports. Currently, he believes that more should be done in terms of preventing gambling-related harm from spreading its sticky tentacles to more professional athletes and dragging them down to the unfortunate path of gambling addicts.
According to Schwarz, the AFL has a major gambling problem, with more players getting in serious trouble because of gambling. He shared that there are three or four times more problem gamblers in sports than professional athletes who suffer from other types of addictions. The former Australian rules footballer further shared that about 20 to 30% of the players in the AFL suffered from a gambling addiction, which made the issue a major one.
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Olivia Cole
