The punters' thoughts on gambling culture and trends in Australia

[mouncey2franklin]

They have threads on this topic on the main board and SRP from time to time.

I'm interested to get the opinions of my fellow punting board regulars.

Some of us refer to ourselves as 'degenerates', 'addicts', etc, and in many cases, we might not really be joking...

I saw the following article on r/AFL and it got me thinking.

Sportsbet is now owned by Dublin-based Flutter Entertainment, the world’s biggest online gambling company, with a market capitalisation of $29.5bn. In its latest results, Flutter gloated about having 50% of Australia’s online gambling market, with 1.1 million regular monthly gamblers who collectively lost $2.3bn to Sportsbet alone in 2021.

A generation of children increasingly think gambling is inextricably linked with the AFL | Tim Costello

Codes say without betting sponsorships we cannot have top-tier play but there is nothing inevitable about having gambling so intertwined with sports

www.theguardian.com

Taking those figures on face value, that's an average loss of around $2,000 per year, for each regular punter.

Of course in the real world it probably doesn't quite work like that.

The bulk of the money would come from a relatively smaller subset of the userbase i.e. big-spending addicts and genuine problem gamblers.

But the point still remains: there's a lot of money in this industry, and it comes, by definition, from losers.

How do you, as a regular punter, feel about the saturation of gambling ads in footy these days?

I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I don't like the idea of stooges such as Demetriou and McLachlan making personal fortunes by selling out the fans of the game.

On the other hand, I see most people as hopelessly moronic, and if it wasn't sportsbet taking their cash, it would be some other grifter or scam.

Does the shameless wall-to-wall advertising of gambling during the game bother you?

Do you think it should be banned for the benefit of the children?

Or would you like to see more of Nathan Brown

22

Nathan Brown

Age

35

Ht

196cm

Wt

99kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

8.8

2star

K

3.9

2star

HB

4.9

4star

M

2.7

3star

T

1.8

4star

No current season stats available

D

6.4

2star

K

3.2

2star

HB

3.2

3star

M

1.8

2star

T

2.8

5star

and Billy Brownless giving you the hot tips this weekend?

Maybe even a live odds tracker next to each team in the score visual on screen?

Let's see what the punters themselves think about all of this.

Over to you, bigfooty punting board

 

[NYRB]

Ill put in my two cents.

I grew up with family that weren't into gambling or any games involving chance. Back in the day, there were already restrictions with in-play betting - that was mentioned in the article. I admit that there was no way as much advertising as there is today. I was at the cricket this summer and have worked at cricket grounds, one thing I do notice is this younger generation all they talk is the odds or the bets they have placed during a game. (a sneak peak at the cricket, and the fans around me are doing their late same game multis for the cricket) I mean dare I say it, its not just AFL but other sports may have this same problem. eg soccer, cricket. I have read somewhere , some European teams have taken the stance to ban advertising related to gambling. I cant see it happening in the AFL as there is too much money involved for the AFL to simply ignore. A report in the The Age reported that the AFL is in line to pocket close to $30 million product fees alone in 2022 from betting agencies. That is just a base figure as well. No way they pass that up . Link to this article:

The AFL’s ‘engine’: How gambling money underpins footy

One of the key figures in sports gambling has opened up about the millions flowing to footy from wagering companies.

www.theage.com.au

Sportsbet when I used in it back in the day, were probably the 6th or 7th biggest company in Australia with a fairly limited website. But by jeez things have changed since then.

The ones I probably feel are for the kids who only see it being brought up again and again.

Im lucky as I come from a fairly strong quantitative background. ( I did a bit of Engineering, Statistics at University and I can see the benefit of that knowledge). Also 18 years of experience helps. (you cant talk to the common person on the street who doesnt like sport about 'spreads', 'lines', 'unders/overs', betting odds in decimal form etc) But if your a newbie getting into the game, is be prepared to cop those losses and I guess to bet within your limits. Im of the motto , if you cant control your emotions, your money, you shouldnt be anywhere near a betting website or outlet that accepts wages.

 

[iluvparis]

Basically any other form of gambling that stops a person flushing money down the pokies is a net positive.

 

[IKnowtheDog]

Gambling needs return to fractional odds rather than decimal.

Imagine the brainiacs this country could produce if 20 leg SGM were calculated fractionally, rather than decimally.

 

[NYRB]

Gambling needs return to fractional odds rather than decimal.

Imagine the brainiacs this country could produce if 20 leg SGM were calculated fractionally, rather than decimally.

Dare I say it in Australia, there would be a lot of punters that wouldnt understand fractional odds and like you said many would get sucked into fractional odds for any outcome. (even for me I probably only learnt about it- 10 years into punting) I guess though it comes more from where you have been brought up in, in America its predominately the American Odds, in Europe its Decimal odds and the traditionalists like to use the Fractional odds.

Some of the odds for the #BYO bets on the AFL matches for instance are far too short when you break it down from a game by game perspective. eg you have odds of 12/1 for a team to score overs in 4 quarters of football, but in reality its a 50:50 outcome, which in an ideal world should be a 1 in 16 chance. Just small things like this, SB have in their favour, and often their odds are reduced for these pre-game multis or #BYO bets.

 

[cakewalk06]

They have threads on this topic on the main board and SRP from time to time.

I'm interested to get the opinions of my fellow punting board regulars.

Some of us refer to ourselves as 'degenerates', 'addicts', etc, and in many cases, we might not really be joking...

I saw the following article on r/AFL and it got me thinking.

Sportsbet is now owned by Dublin-based Flutter Entertainment, the world’s biggest online gambling company, with a market capitalisation of $29.5bn. In its latest results, Flutter gloated about having 50% of Australia’s online gambling market, with 1.1 million regular monthly gamblers who collectively lost $2.3bn to Sportsbet alone in 2021.

A generation of children increasingly think gambling is inextricably linked with the AFL | Tim Costello

Codes say without betting sponsorships we cannot have top-tier play but there is nothing inevitable about having gambling so intertwined with sports

www.theguardian.com

Taking those figures on face value, that's an average loss of around $2,000 per year, for each regular punter.

Of course in the real world it probably doesn't quite work like that.

The bulk of the money would come from a relatively smaller subset of the userbase i.e. big-spending addicts and genuine problem gamblers.

But the point still remains: there's a lot of money in this industry, and it comes, by definition, from losers.

How do you, as a regular punter, feel about the saturation of gambling ads in footy these days?

I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I don't like the idea of stooges such as Demetriou and McLachlan making personal fortunes by selling out the fans of the game.

On the other hand, I see most people as hopelessly moronic, and if it wasn't sportsbet taking their cash, it would be some other grifter or scam.

Does the shameless wall-to-wall advertising of gambling during the game bother you?

Do you think it should be banned for the benefit of the children?

Or would you like to see more of Nathan Brown and Billy Brownless giving you the hot tips this weekend?

Maybe even a live odds tracker next to each team in the score visual on screen?

Let's see what the punters themselves think about all of this.

Over to you, bigfooty punting board

Gambling advertising should 100 per cent be banned in Australia but it will not be. It's become an irreplaceable source of revenue for many sporting codes and mainstream and other media.
I have worked in media (mainly newspapers) for 30+ years and i can tell you that as the "rivers of gold" classified ads disappeared from print to online, the only reliable ad sources for newspapers since have been govt and bookmakers.

Prepare for a new ad blitz as News Ltd launches its bookie in Oz. KAYO, Foxtel, newspapers, Punters etc. To run alongside the barrage from Sportsbet.

 

[FallingLiefs]

I am all for banning ads. Should not be so widely advertised, gambling tv shows are ridiculously cringe worthy as I still can’t work out if the traders feeding the star host info want the punters to win or lose.

 

[54Dogs]

I am all for banning ads. Should not be so widely advertised, gambling tv shows are ridiculously cringe worthy as I still can’t work out if the traders feeding the star host info want the punters to win or lose.

They just want turnover, which ultimately equals profit for corps. It would be interesting to know how they are measured from a performance perspective, whether it is ROI or just number of winners. Tipping more favs drives more winners and more turnover so I suspect it's the latter.

 

[checkraiseulite]

agree that all advertising should be gone from non racing channels.

otherwise nothing against people being free to have a bet on sports if they want to.

pokies should be banned outside casinos.

 

[anabac]

agree that all advertising should be gone from non racing channels.

otherwise nothing against people being free to have a bet on sports if they want to.

pokies should be banned outside casinos.

100% agree with your thoughts. But never gonna happen

 

[checkraiseulite]

100% agree with your thoughts. But never gonna happen

agree will never happen.

strangely sportsbet and the other large books would probably be the biggest winner if ads were banned.

 

[FallingLiefs]

They just want turnover, which ultimately equals profit for corps. It would be interesting to know how they are measured from a performance perspective, whether it is ROI or just number of winners. Tipping more favs drives more winners and more turnover so I suspect it's the latter.

I mean turnover is great, but you mostly see a big multi thrown out at boosted odds.

Would just be interested to see if the multis what the multis are priced at internally whether its positive, neutral or negative expected returns. As a commercial you have to think it's fairly close to neutral to get people hooked.

Everytime Nathan Brown throws out a tip pre-game I genuinely find my self trying to work out if it's value or just perceived value.

 

[Fabab]

These days it seems people that dont like something try to impose their ideals against people that enjoy things.
Vegans telling and protesting about eating meat etc,non gamblers complaining about gambling ads etc,non drinkers moaning about alcohol ads etc.

Well i love a steak,bevy and a punt so they can all do one.

 

[anabac]

These days it seems people that dont like something try to impose their ideals against people that enjoy things.
Vegans telling and protesting about eating meat etc,non gamblers complaining about gambling ads etc,non drinkers moaning about alcohol ads etc.

Well i love a steak,bevy and a punt so they can all do one.

You understand it's only the loud minority of those groups that make the noise. 99% of vegans, non gambler's and teetotallers just keep to themselves. It's the fact that everyone has a platform now and can be heard that you think it's only happening these days

 

[Fabab]

So all punters posting in here?

 

[ash_1050]

Have mentioned it previously on Bigfooty but a friend of a friend is a chronic gambling addict.

First time I met him we picked him up from the TAB and went back to my mate's place where he flicked the TV over to the races and then spent the next two hours pulling TAB tickets out of his pocket for each upcoming race. I shudder to think how much planning went into putting bets on two hours worth of races knowing he wasn't going to be near a TAB terminal during that time.

The second time I visited we picked him up from his place and then had to go via the TAB so he could cash his tickets to have some money for the night out, which we ended up at a venue that had pokies so my mate and I had a couple of beers while the gambling addict ignored us entirely in favour of finding a pokies machine to play for an hour or so.

The worst bit is both of these incidents happened after his wife and kids had already left him because of his gambling issues, and he was doing absolutely nothing to acknowledge that or try and fix the issue.

 

[iluvparis]

These days it seems people that dont like something try to impose their ideals against people that enjoy things.
Vegans telling and protesting about eating meat etc,non gamblers complaining about gambling ads etc,non drinkers moaning about alcohol ads etc.

Well i love a steak,bevy and a punt so they can all do one.

The reason there should probably be some sort of restriction is that like alcohol and tobacco, being addicted to gambling is associated with a big negative externality on the rest of society. Less so the case for being a meat addict (apart from maybe bowel cancer/heart disease).

 

[checkraiseulite]

think gambling ads are even worse than cigs / alcohol for children.

the way they infiltrate sport i think is pretty bad - and i like punting on anything that moves.

 

[Jugada]

All gambling advertising should be banned for the good of the average punter. Bookmakers re-routing those hundreds of millions of dollars into other avenues to try to lure people in to bet with them could only be a net positive for all of us. Plus they're all cringeworthy garbage anyway.

 

[TryAnHit]

Gambling adds should be banned when they ban winning punters.. and only allow losers to bet.

AFL is also a joke... most won't know but if you own a betting shop you have to pay the AFL a few % on turnover or profit which ever is more each month for every dollar that is wagerd on AFL... cricket and NRL also do the same...

That is why they allow all the adds

 

[mouncey2franklin]

AFL is also a joke... most won't know but if you own a betting shop you have to pay the AFL a few % on turnover or profit which ever is more each month for every dollar that is wagerd on AFL... cricket and NRL also do the same...

I did not know that.

Would this mean that it is in the AFL's interest for highly-backed goalscorers to kick less goals?

 

[TryAnHit]

I did not know that.

Would this mean that it is in the AFL's interest for highly-backed goalscorers to kick less goals?

Thats a little too conspiracy theory. They just print money long term thru turnover

 

[burge13]

Gambling ads should not be in games, nor talk of odds. But at the same time that helps pay player salaries and those useless picks often cost me SGM so i say ban all ads and give the players a pay cut to make up for them not getting 20+ disposals!!

In all seriousness, odds shouldnt be seen on footy tipping sites. Kids tip, no need for odds to infiltrate that side of things. Probably should advertise during games but sportsbet ads are all over socials, tv, apps, websites. Its unavoidable to a degree?

Maybe im a bit old school but perhaps this, like almost everything is on the parents to teach their kids right from wrong rather than complaining...

Australia definitely has a gambling issue though. Does anyone even watch sport without a multi on anymore? Does make it more exciting and unsure where fun begins and problem starts but its very widespread here...

 

[GROTTO]

think gambling ads are even worse than cigs / alcohol for children.

the way they infiltrate sport i think is pretty bad - and i like punting on anything that moves.

I cant speak for all AFL punters on our forum, but none of us care for these ads or reminders whatsoever.

I wish they were banned.

 

[BloodRet]

That ad chick who says ‘this is your popular same game multi’ does my absolute ******* head in. It literally is before over 50% of videos I watch and is nauseating. The advertisement gambling gets is actually pretty psychotic. What are they tryna do send the country broke? Pretty ****ed up when you think about it. Leading cause of suicide and these campaigners wanna advertise it everywhere you go