A joint appearance of Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) executives before an online gambling inquiry that is seen as key to further regulation tightening led to speculation that both sporting bodies are changing their stance against changes.

AFL’s chief executive officer, Gill McLachlan and his NRL counterpart, Andrew Abdo, will appear together during a public hearing on Tuesday in Canberra as part of the online gambling inquiry initiated by the government to determine whether further tightening of the gambling regulation is needed, reported Australian Financial Review.

Their appearance side-by-side is stirring rumors within the gambling industry that the country’s top sports administrators will present a united front on the proposed tightening of the betting advertising rules despite the submissions made by their respective sporting codes claiming that the current regime is appropriate and needs no further regulation.

“Since the sport codes made their written submission, we have received substantial evidence contradicting their claim that the current rules around [the] promotion of online sports betting are appropriate,” commented the chair of the inquiry, Labor MP Peta Murphy.

Pleased to see that both executives agreed to appear together, Murphy noted that “this will be their opportunity to tell the committee and the public whether they have considered that evidence and the broader community sentiment.”

Change of Position Is Likely

McLachlan implied that there may be a change in AFL’s recommendation that no further changes be made during a Melbourne radio interview in which he admitted that the amount of gambling advertising was “probably too much” and “in your face.”

He also explained that the league’s set of restrictions “are being reviewed at the moment, hinting that “probably they will be wound tighter,” but underlining that the AFL does not “believe in prohibition because all it does is drive it underground or offshore and that has its own set of problems.”

A recently released survey by the Australian Gambling Research Centre showed that more than half of Australians supported an outright ban on gambling advertising. Data also revealed that 41% of the survey respondents had been exposed to gambling advertising four or more times per week.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies also posted the results of a survey showing that three in every four Australians had gambled at least once in the past 12 months, 38% of which doing it on a weekly basis, claiming that at least half of those gambling are at risk of experiencing gambling-related issues.

Other industry executives set to appear before the inquiry will be the CEOs of Tabcorp and Sportsbet, Adan Rytenskild and Barni Evans, former Queensland premier Anna Bligh for the Australian Banking Association, and ex-federal cabinet minister who chairs the industry Responsible Wagering Australia group, Nick Minchin.

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Gambling sponsor firm names are likely to be removed from the front of football shirts as the UK government is looking to negotiate a deal with the Premier League.

Gambling Firms Taken Off Front of Shirts

Ahead of the much-anticipated release of the White Paper, the UK government is likely to agree to a deal with the English Premier League (EPL) that will see football clubs voluntarily remove gambling operators’ names from the front of their shirts, reported the BBC.

The deal will be in line with the Premier League’s previous statement that “a self-regulatory approach would provide a practical and flexible alternative to legislation or outright prohibition,” but whether the EPL clubs would agree is still unclear as top-flight clubs are yet to vote on the plan.

Out of 20 EPL clubs, eight feature a gambling sponsor on the front of their shirts and if the words of Aston Villa’s CEO Christian Purslow are to be taken at face value, convincing some of the clubs to get rid of their gambling shirt partners may prove difficult.

In January, Purslow met with a fan consultation group after a report that the club had signed a deal with the Asia-based betting firm BK8 and later on issued a statement highlighting that teams outside of the top six would hardly replace gambling shirt sponsors with non-gambling partners as they receive from such sponsorships twice as much financially.

The plan will be even harder to sell to the English Football League (EFL) which is sponsored by a gambling operator and has previously stated that any outright ban on gambling sponsorships would mean £40 million ($48 million) less a year for each of its 72 member clubs.

The Commission Also Urged Voluntary Actions

A voluntary approach to gambling reforms was implied by the Gambling Commission’s CEO Andrew Rhodes who first delivered a keynote speech at ICE London 2023 in which he highlighted that safer gambling would be the way forward for the largest regulated gambling market in the world.

In his speech, he also suggested that the regulator would not impose mandatory affordability checks but would rather allow operators to address the issue themselves. A similar suggestion Rhodes made in an interview with Racing TV, shifting the responsibility to operators to address problem gambling risks.

In the White Paper which is expected to be released in the coming weeks, the government is not likely to propose that gambling sponsorships are banned by law but rather leave the sports clubs to find the optimal solution by means of voluntary actions.

According to the deal, football clubs will retain the opportunity to advertise gambling partners across their stadia and on other parts of their shirts, leaving the way for bookmakers to continue their involvement with football.

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