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With little fanfare, the FFA has ushered in a sponsorship deal with betting company Bet365.
This isn’t the first time a betting entity has had a financial agreement with the FFA – TAB was an official FFA sponsor in 2013. It’s not difficult to understand why the FFA chose not to celebrate this development, with gambling addiction an issue that is only growing in seriousness.
The ease with which someone can bet on any sport in this country and the saturated exposure betting companies have during sports telecasts – often seen in integrated segments placed within match coverage – means not many people would welcome the sight of David Gallop beaming at a press conference while publicly championing a new bookmaker buddy.
In England, the Premier League is completely intertwined with betting and has reaped lucrative benefits. Even in the United States, with their unusual state-to-state discrepancies on the legality of sports betting, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has recently come out publicly to vigorously argue in favour of the legalisation and embracing of sports betting.
There are entire podcasts, listened to by thousands, dedicated exclusively to betting on American sports. It is in many ways a development made, in effect, only in the realms of officialdom.
Gambling addiction is an elusive moral subject. Those, like myself, who get no thrill from betting at all find it difficult to understand the appeal. Often this leads to a mild disdain for the problem – when the urge is so utterly untranslatable it’s impossible to be truly empathetic; just stop betting, it’s that simple, right?
Wrong. Where the rush of placing money on the line inspires only a repellent sense of anxiety in some, it inspires a hugely addictive adrenaline rush in others.
The results, paired with the technological advancements in online and mobile gambling, have made the industry one of the fastest growing in the world. Sporting bodies of government, recognising this growth, are reluctant to take a moral stand against aiding in this rapid expansion.
With a reform package announced in May 2017, the government plans to place nominal restrictions on gambling advertising during sports telecasts, creating a gambling-free zone that extends five minutes before and – if the broadcast begins and ends before 8:30pm – after the telecast. The restrictions apply to all forms of broadcasting, from public television to streaming and catch-up services.
The stated reasoning behind this reform is focussed on the protection of children and a community-held desire to protect them from early exposure to betting practices.
(Image: AAP Image/Ben Macmahon)
The problem is, however, is that many sporting broadcasts take place around the margins of that cut-off time, and it’s unclear as to whether it applies to the quasi-ad betting segments, like the kind that top and tail Fox Sports’ broadcasts, spouting odds and betting categories. Clearly, the fact that the FFA, NRL and AFL all have betting companies sitting in the higher brackets of their corporate partnership posters also somewhat undermines the intention.
It goes without saying that anyone who turns to football and any of its governing entities expecting to see pilgrims of ethical decency is more idiotic that naive. Financial benefit is held in higher regard than anything else, and the glinting pools of money poured into the gambling industry catch the eye like little else.
The industry has branched out to the point of even sapping at sports journalism. With news outlets and media companies shaving huge sides of fat off themselves, gurgling and withering as mass sackings and downsizes abound, the sports betting agencies are recruiting journalists to provide tailored content to their growing member bases.
Attracting users to their websites with star journos or featured ex-sportsman columnists leads to a bump in sign-ups just through proximity alone. Many of the writers I admire also moonlight writing cookie-cutter ‘Five things to look out for…’ type articles for betting websites. Theirs is an industry that can offer journalistic content as a bonus, with their main source of income standing sinisterly off to one side, rubbing its hands.
It’s bad enough that our national team is constantly billed as Caltex Socceroos, as if they’re playing just as much for the Jackson Pollock of petrol companies, splashing oil liberally over the planet’s natural landscape, as they are playing for the country.
No, it’s been deemed that another grubby smear, imparted by stained dollars passing from hand to hand, must also be left. Just because the football world bathes permanently in the slimy swamp of moral bankruptcy doesn’t mean this latest blotch should go, as the FFA clearly intended, unnoticed.
When a company, the name of which literally implies that there’s a bet to be made every single day of the year, advises one to gamble responsibly, it’s hard not to scoff.
People are of course free to spend their money in whatever legal manner they choose. Football in Australia can certainly do with more investment. To rail against bad morals in football is to walk headlong into the stiffest of winds, but there is, however, still valour to be found in every stride.