Broadcast options for Australian Rugby

[The Ghost of Raelene]

With the gambling discussion, I’m not sure how much it will change things in the public. By all measures poker machines are the biggest issue for gambling addiction in Australia and ads on these have been banned for decades. Is pointing the finger at places like Sportsbet an easy thing to point at without understanding if it will bring about any change? With the pokies example advertising ban didn’t move the needle at all. Would we be potentially jeopardizing the television revenue streams and the professional sporting industry for something that might be zero difference?

I couldn't care less about Pokies tbh. At least they are in controlled environments that don't expose kids brains. If you want to feed it your cash then so be it.

The apps on phones and groups like Sportsbet talking about new features like "bet with mates" is genuinely trying to drag you in. It can also create huge mental health issues with anxiety about it, chasing wins and not to mention this stuff is being increasingly looked at when you go for loans and even certain work types.

 

[LeCheese]

The apps on phones and groups like Sportsbet talking about new features like "bet with mates" is genuinely trying to drag you in. It can also create huge mental health issues with anxiety about it, chasing wins and not to mention this stuff is being increasingly looked at when you go for loans and even certain work types.

The new Sportsbet "human intelligence" campaign promoting their social feed is fucking hilarious if you think about it - the suggestion of inherently fallible humans being superior to AI/machine learning (which I believe has taken over a lot of the grunt work for them in-house)

 

[JRugby2]

With the gambling discussion, I’m not sure how much it will change things in the public. By all measures poker machines are the biggest issue for gambling addiction in Australia and ads on these have been banned for decades. Is pointing the finger at places like Sportsbet an easy thing to point at without understanding if it will bring about any change? With the pokies example advertising ban didn’t move the needle at all. Would we be potentially jeopardizing the television revenue streams and the professional sporting industry for something that might be zero difference?

I think you have a valid point re what's it actually going to do. I did some quick desktop research to try and see what effects bans in other countries had, had on their levels of gambling spend. In Italy there was a ban introduced in 2019 and it's had almost no impact on gambling spend which I found interesting. No real data for Spain or Belgium either. That said I don't think we're going to see the sudden death of TV networks or sporting codes. They'll get money from other advertisers.

It would be interesting to see the result in say 5 years time to see if there is a long-tail to this but it seems as if we're likely to still gamble away into the future and sadly this is going to be a generation-sized hole we'll likely be stuck in.

 

[Wallaby Man]

I couldn't care less about Pokies tbh. At least they are in controlled environments that don't expose kids brains. If you want to feed it your cash then so be it.

The apps on phones and groups like Sportsbet talking about new features like "bet with mates" is genuinely trying to drag you in. It can also create huge mental health issues with anxiety about it, chasing wins and not to mention this stuff is being increasingly looked at when you go for loans and even certain work types.

Online betting is considerably more controlled than pokies are tho. They can cut you off in an instant whereas pokies it’s near impossible to stop people.

Im a fan of reform but I’m not expecting any change in public behavior.

With children it might be getting baked into their head, but without access to money it’s pointless. I used to get $5-10 a week in pocket money, if it was available to me not sure where I’d get the money to do it outside of parents making the funds blindly available. I’m more of a fan of parents start parenting.

 

[Wallaby Man]

I think Ghost made a good point earlier that it's the younger generations watching sport at the moment where banning the gambling advertising will be most beneficial and probably make a tangible impact on their behaviour in the future.

The way gambling and sports have been tied together over the last couple of years makes it nearly impossible to separate the two during a broadcast. The American sports used to be fairly clean but now all the laws over there changed it's going insane with draftkings odds and commentator pre-game specials.

Of course boomers who never gambled and always enjoyed sports may not be impacted, but if you're a generation where from day 1 of your sporting experience there is someone telling you the odds and specials etc. it changes your perception.

I’m definitely not a boomer. Gen Y. So technology and odds been fairly prevalent.

As I mentioned in a post earlier, I’m not against reform. Just don’t believe it will achieve what it’s after.

 

[half]

Tend to agree with those posts that say the loss of betting ads during sport will be replaced by others most likely paying less.

The effect is the NRL & AFL will get less money and as long as existing contracts exist the TV networks will probably loss money.

But this is no reason not to ban them.

 

[Rob42]

The new Sportsbet "human intelligence" campaign promoting their social feed is fucking hilarious if you think about it - the suggestion of inherently fallible humans being superior to AI/machine learning (which I believe has taken over a lot of the grunt work for them in-house)

Well, y'know, humans thinking they're smarter than the house is the basis of pretty much all gambling...

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

Online betting is considerably more controlled than pokies are tho. They can cut you off in an instant whereas pokies it’s near impossible to stop people.

Im a fan of reform but I’m not expecting any change in public behavior.

With children it might be getting baked into their head, but without access to money it’s pointless. I used to get $5-10 a week in pocket money, if it was available to me not sure where I’d get the money to do it outside of parents making the funds blindly available. I’m more of a fan of parents start parenting.

Absolutely agree with this.

They don't cut you off though. If they do people move to the next site and even use VPNs for overseas sites. Setting up of accounts is easy even for underage kids. The amount of people that share accounts as well circumvents any age restrictions. There are a lot of kids who get a lot more money than just lunch or they have access to it and mum or dad might not notice or bring up for a while. It's also not even the $5 a 17 year old might lose but the habit they build as they mature and begin earning more and the betting doesn't stay $5. I have mates that put on $100 same game multis multiple times a week and they certainly aren't earning a wage to be betting near $1000 every weekend.

I sound like a bit of a gronk I know, but I just don't think we need advertising for something that is a scourge on society. People who want to gamble will gamble and they should have the right to do so IMO. I don't want to infringe on peoples freedoms but we don't need to sell it. There will be people who wouldn't have gambled get themselves into something they shouldn't have and it was preventable.

Will a ban fix the issue? No. But there is no reason to allow advertising for something that can do such damage.

 

[JRugby2]

Tend to agree with those posts that say the loss of betting ads during sport will be replaced by others most likely paying less.

The effect is the NRL & AFL will get less money and as long as existing contracts exist the TV networks will probably loss money.

But this is no reason not to ban them.

Can't see this happening. I know for a fact there are a number of brands and advertisers who would happily pay what betting agencies do, for those spots on TV and streaming.

 

[John S]

The thing that's most incongruous with it all are those warnings at the end of the ads the "what are you really gambling with?" "you win some, you lose more" etc - they don't do any thing realistically. They just feel like they're put in for form (well they have to be).

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

The thing that's most incongruous with it all are those warnings at the end of the ads the "what are you really gambling with?" "you win some, you lose more" etc - they don't do any thing realistically. They just feel like they're put in for form (well they have to be).

Bizarre aren't they. Should just impose a levy on them per ad to the local health district its being shown in. $500 per ad

 

[LeCheese]

Announced yesterday that FTA ad revenue dropped $250m for FY24; Seven West also pausing share buyback and dividends due to reduced ad revenue (no doubt other factors at play here).

 

[LeCheese]

The thing that's most incongruous with it all are those warnings at the end of the ads the "what are you really gambling with?" "you win some, you lose more" etc - they don't do any thing realistically. They just feel like they're put in for form (well they have to be).

The only positive is that they have improved (from a psychological point of view) recently over the flippant "gamble responsibly"

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

This the FTA future? Just a slowly shrinking to a point of existence as a service only.

 

[JRugby2]

Announced yesterday that FTA ad revenue dropped $250m for FY24; Seven West also pausing share buyback and dividends due to reduced ad revenue (no doubt other factors at play here).

Like funding hail mary defamation cases?

 

[JRugby2]

This the FTA future? Just a slowly shrinking to a point of existence as a service only.

Yeah probably - networks are already predicting the tipping point to VOD in the next 4-5 years

 

[John S]

Yeah probably - networks are already predicting the tipping point to VOD in the next 4-5 years

Which is logical - we don't have an aerial at home (we didn't put one in when we built 3 years ago). We only watch on demand using the channels apps/online viewing services and stream it to the TV using Chrome Cast, or on our other devices.

We stopped watching live to air TV near on 10 years ago.

 

[JRugby2]

The biggest issue I feel they'll face re Audience decline is their content mix. Again - outside of sport and news - there is literally nothing but recycled reality TV formats on FTA/ BVOD. I get the argument that they are extraordinarily cheap to produce or licence compared to scripted series - but surely at some point the country gets sick of watching people argue with each other over trivial/ confected conflicts?

Maybe I'm giving the country too much credit here...

 

[JRugby2]

Guardian Full Story podcast on the topic diving into the argument of banning gambling ads would tank FTA networks (and news media bargaining agreements with google/ meta expiring)

- reports based on their figures gambling ad revenue makes up < 1% of all TV ad spend
- uses themselves as a case study as they turned off gambling ads last year (previously their fastest growing source of ad revenue), it hurt but they didn’t collapse.

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

Love to see what sort of hit banning of Tobacco had on media companies. Much smaller landscape then so could you assume a larger risk for them at the time?