Sports betting advertising should be subject to restrictions in line with those governing alcohol and tobacco, says a University of Wollongong researcher.
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There has been a rising chorus of public disgust with the prevalence of various sport betting agencies promoting odds during sports coverage. The NRL coverage on WIN TV is one such example.
Samantha Thomas, principal research fellow in the university's Centre for Health Initiatives, said this caused a problem because many children were tuning in to watch the football and were being exposed to these ads.
"The problem comes when you have a very adult product being advertised in some quantity during time slots where children are watching," Dr Thomas said.
"The same principle applied for tobacco and for alcohol, which is why we have such strong regulation around those two products.
"We would argue that gambling products really are no different and that there needs to be a more thorough look at the regulation around the types of marketing that are occurring for these products."
Dr Thomas said sports programming was exempt from the guidelines about not advertising gambling within children's timeslots - a policy that "doesn't make any sense".
"That's where we think there needs to be the change, so that those guidelines are consistent across all time slots where we may have considerable numbers of children watching those programs."
Last week, Dr Thomas addressed the federal government's Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform, which includes Throsby MP Stephen Jones.
She told the committee about research which found that children showed "quite high brand recognition", with some even able to name two or three different sports-betting brands.
"That's a concern, particularly if you look at the same research that was conducted into tobacco: brand recall in kids has shown to be problematic in the long term," Dr Thomas said.
"In the tobacco research it showed embedding tobacco branding within sport softened children to the brand and to the product."
But Dr Thomas said whether or not the gambling industry was trying to build future customers was not the point of controls.
"We need to be very clear that this isn't about whether the wagering industry is targeting children or not," she said.
"This is about the extent to which children are exposed to the advertising."
Parliament must act, says Jones
The federal government may have to step in and do something about ‘‘incessant’’ sports betting ads, says Throsby MP Stephen Jones.
Mr Jones is a member of the government’s select committee on Gambling Reform and he voiced the public mood in a recent session.
‘‘I basically said that the community’s had enough of it,’’ Mr Jones said.
‘‘The codes should respond to their members and community anger about the incessant promotion of gambling during the broadcast or at the game.
‘‘If the codes don’t act I think parliament should.’’
Mr Jones said sports betting promotion – whether during the ad breaks or embedded within the coverage – had gone too far. Especially when it’s aired while children were watching.
‘‘I’m not against gambling per se...but it’s another thing altogether to be promoting it through incessant advertising and ramming the odds down our throats when we’re attending the game or watching it in our living rooms.
‘‘When my five-year-old son can quote the odds before he knows the names of all the players in the team, you’ve got a problem.’’
The select committee will hand down its draft report next month and Mr Jones is hopeful it will include some restrictions on gambling ads.
‘‘Yes, I’ll certainly be pushing for that,’’ he said.
