Don't let it take hold! They will absolutely dominate the political lobbying scene and you'll never get rid of it. Sports betting being allowed makes Australia's recent social media ban to U18s clear that the priority is to support traditional media rather than prevent harm to youth.
Sports betting ads and apps are everywhere in Australia with practically no restrictions. You cannot avoid it, every free to air channel is basically now sponsored by sports betting ads, every traditional newspaper is kept alive by sports betting ads and every second billboard and poster is for sports betting. Children are now exposed and normalised to it from birth.
Absolutely nothing is being done from a regulatory point of view. It enables traditional media and it seems traditional media still call the shots in Australia.
May be too late. First, several states allowed casinos because of increased tax revenue. Now the industry has gotten big and the model seems to be (as I saw from some random guy on X): "Let's grind up people's souls and see if money comes out"
It’s too late. I got a behind the scenes view of a company that was heavily into online gambling, lobbying for further gambling legalization… and was just one arm of a larger corporation that ran right wing media organizations and produced & distributed for right wing personalities that you have heard of if you’ve looked into that world much at all (one features in a meme-image that’s been popular for many years, for example). Like, they were coupled closely enough that work for the media side crossed over to the gambling side.
IDK if the left is as tied up in it as the right, but that was about a decade ago and I haven’t had more insight since, but judging from the effects I believe it must have gotten far worse. Those orgs pull in stupid money and that one, at least, was using it to boost both gambling legality and far-right politics generally. That had the ears of a lot of the public, and of a lot of politicians.
Couple that with post-Citizens-United “dark money”… yeah, we’re in a bad place and there’s hardly even any awareness of all this outside some politics-nerd circles.
Sports betting ads and apps are everywhere in Australia with practically no restrictions. You cannot avoid it, every free to air channel is basically now sponsored by sports betting ads, every traditional newspaper is kept alive by sports betting ads and every second billboard and poster is for sports betting. Children are now exposed and normalised to it from birth.
Absolutely nothing is being done from a regulatory point of view. It enables traditional media and it seems traditional media still call the shots in Australia.