Departing Australian Football League (AFL) boss Gillon McLachlan has faced a federal probe into gambling amid an increasing number of calls for the authorities to further crack down on the gambling and betting sector.
Both the AFL boss and the National Rugby League (NRL) chief executive officer Andrew Abto appeared before a federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling earlier today. At the inquiry, Members of Parliament pressed the due on their alleged ties to the local betting industry. As mentioned above, the probe has come amid an unprecedented campaign from Australian politicians, health experts, gambling addicts, and Australian Football League fans who call for stricter measures to be imposed on gambling advertising in the country, and also ask some broader questions around the code’s partnerships with gambling and sports betting operators that are now associated with much of the game.
Today, Mr McLachlan told the inquiry he thought the review was released on time and acknowledged the existing risks of gambling-related harm. He, however, shared a belief that over-regulation of gambling advertising or imposing restrictions on AFL-associated gambling sponsorship deals would compromise the game.
Apart from that the departing AFL boss disputed an assertion from Pepa Murphy, a Member of Parliament from the Labour Party and a committee chair, that the Australian Football League would be able to find other sponsors to replace gambling operators in case it needed to do so.
AFL Fans and Campaigners Call for Gambling Advertising and Gambling Sponsorship Ban
According to the AFL boss, cutting ties with the League’s gambling sponsors would lead to a funding shortfall that would equal almost an entire net financial loss because gambling operators were not that easily replaceable with other sponsorship categories.
Gillon McLachlan once again confirmed that he opposes the proposed ban on gambling advertising in Australia, saying that such a measure is likely to fend the betting industry off, with gambling operators leaving the country or going “underground”, which would make the sector even more difficult to regulate.
The ongoing inquiry was presented with the results of the latest survey of the AFL Fans Association that was held among 3,000 individuals.
The survey uncovered an increase in the opposition faced by football’s association with sports betting. According to the research, more than three-quarters of respondents (76%) believed that local authorities should suspend gambling advertising from broadcast television and radio channels. Even more survey respondents – 79% – wanted gambling advertising to no longer be available at AFL grounds.
The majority of respondents (67%) agreed that Australian Football League clubs should not be allowed to get sponsorship money from poker machine revenues or gambling advertising, while 62% of the people said the AFL should not receive any gambling revenue as sponsorship money at all. According to almost half of the survey respondents (44%), Australians should not be allowed to place bets on AFL matches online.
The revenue AFL gets from “product fees” on gambling is not widely commented on by senior executives and the fans of the game do not usually know about it. During the inquiry, Mr McLachlan did not reveal the exact figures generated by the product fees but shared that amount was a portion of the volume of turnover on the sport. He shared that the Australian Football League had several product fee arrangements with all the sports betting operators and confirmed that the League got a percentage of their operations as a result of those deals.
- Author
Olivia Cole
