Live odds ban debate exposes sport and gambling’s uncomfortable mutual dependency
David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Watching sport on TV may not exactly be a healthy activity, but it should at least do more good than harm. Yet viewers are exposed to all manner of advertising and promotional messages extolling the dubious-but-seductive virtues of alcohol, fatty foods and sugary drinks. But it is gambling, especially online and mobile, that has come into focus as sport’s most potentially damaging byproduct. In 2013, the Gillard government banned the live spruiking of odds thanks to the barefaced over-reach of Tom Waterhouse and Channel Nine. Federal, state and territory governments have just signed up to a new National Consumer Protection Framework to help online problem gamblers. Now the Turnbull government, while charging the networks about A$90 million less for spectrum access, has banned gambling advertising and promotion on TV for the duration of sports contests until an 8.30pm watershed. This move stimulated vigorous resistance from sports, media corporations and betting companies. In doing so, they have exposed the ethically questionable foundations of their multiple mutual dependencies. How sport and TV became ‘addicts’ Genuine sports lovers, and those who simply wish to protect the vulnerable from harmfully manipulative messages, may wonder how sport and TV became so dependent on gambling. There has been betting and wagering on sport as long as someone kept the score. Variously, the practice has been banned, regulated, and taxed. It can be respectable, as in the case of a Melbourne Cup flutter; dodgy, when it involves unlicensed SP betting; and downright criminal, especially when syndicates manipulate results during betting plunges. But what is unprecedented about gambling on sport today is its astonishing visibility. Where once the logos of betting companies and the odds on sporting outcomes could be largely confined to those […]