An Australian parliamentary inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm has recommended the establishment of a national gambling regulator to oversee all licensing and regulation nationwide, with online operators to be charged an annual levy to fund the country’s harm prevention measures.
It also calls for a complete ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling, to be phased in over three years.
The findings of the inquiry were published on Wednesday in a report titled “You win some, you lose more”, which listed 31 recommendations aimed at reducing harm to the Australian population.
While many of the recommendations focus on various health-related programs and data collection methods to assist with improving harm reduction measures in the future, the call for a national regulator stands out as a significant shift for the industry.
“We have recommended that a single Australian Government Minister be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive national strategy on online gambling harm reduction, supported by national regulation, an online gambling ombudsman, a harm reduction levy on online wagering service providers (WSPs), and a public education campaign,” said inquiry chair, Peta Murphy MP.
“Under national regulation, the Australian Government would be responsible for all regulation and licensing of online gambling, although the states and territories would retain the capacity to levy point of consumption taxes on online gambling. The Committee has recommended stronger consumer protections for online gambling, including a requirement for WSPs to verify their customer’s identity before accepting bets from them, a ban on inducements, and a legislated duty of care on WSPs.”
The proposed ban on advertising any form of online gambling would be introduced across four phases over three years, the report says, with Phase One to include a prohibition of all online gambling inducements and inducement advertising, and all advertising of online gambling on social media and online platforms. It would also prohibit such advertising on commercial radio between school drop-off and pick-up times.
Phase Two would ban all online gambling advertising and commentary on odds both during and for an hour before and after any sports broadcast, along with in-stadia advertising and logos on player uniforms.
Phase Three would add prohibition of all broadcast online gambling advertising between the hours of 6am and 10pm, while Phase 4 would see a blanket ban prohibition on all online gambling advertising and sponsorship.
Exemptions would include gambling advertising on dedicated racing channels and programming.
“Online gambling companies advertise so much in Australia because it works,” said Murphy. “Online gambling has been deliberately and strategically marketed alongside sport, which has normalized it as a fun, harmless, and sociable activity that is part of a favorite pastime. Gambling advertising is grooming children and young people to gamble and encourages riskier behavior. The torrent of advertising is inescapable. It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online.
“A phased, comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising on all media – broadcast and online, that leaves no room for circumvention, is needed.”
As previously reported by IAG, the prospect of a national regulator and a ban on online gambling advertising has received support from Adam Rytenskild, the Managing Director and CEO of Australian racing and wagering giant Tabcorp.
Speaking at the Regulating the Game conference in Sydney in March, Rytenskild said the current “patchwork quilt” style of regulation in Australia was ineffective and called for a national regulator as a means of better policing corporate bookmakers such as Sportsbet and Ladbrokes.
“Our regulators do great work but are constrained by not having a nationally consistent, well-resourced framework,” he said at the time,
“Instead, we have a patchwork quilt system with different rules and regulations across each state. It has allowed foreign online bookmakers to be licensed in the Northern Territory and this has contributed to the proliferation of gambling advertising across our screens.
“The state-based licensing and regulatory regimes were established more than 20 years ago, and they haven’t kept pace with the changing wagering ecosystem which has been disrupted.”
