🎲💸 "Should I Get A Sports Betting Account?" | 🏔 A 'Big Question' Edition.

The money stuff that you wish they taught in school

Q: “Is it ok to get a sports betting account? The ads are everywhere so it must be fine right?”

-Bailey, Qld

Hey Bailey. This is a great question. It affects a lot of people in Australia. But I know that there’s probably a lot of you reading this who think ‘well I’m never going to gamble or sign up to one of these services, so this doesn’t apply to me.’

But it might. Statistically, it is very likely that a friend, family member or partner will sign up at some point. It’s even more likely if you’re in the 18-30 age group. 

So this newsletter will be useful for you too, so you can understand how it all works, and signs to look out for in people you care about.

One thing I want to get out of the way up top. Gambling can be an emotional topic. Many people have very strong opinions about it (both positive and negative).

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Now, let’s get into this Big Question.

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Answer

This answer is broken up into the following sections:

1. Key Facts

2. Key Myths

3. Why is Gambling Legal?

4. A Bigger Issue

5. Practical Tips

Gambling: Key Facts ✅

It’s not my job to tell you, or anyone, what to do. But I can provide you facts and data. Then each you can take that information and make a decision that you feel is right for you. 

So here’s some key facts to get us started:

• Fact: gambling is legal in Australia.

• Fact: there have been attempts to make gambling illegal at different times in Australia. They didn’t work.

• Facts: there are many forms of legalised gambling. Sports betting is one. Betting on racing (horses, greyhounds) is another. So are casino games (blackjack, roulette) and lotteries or ‘lotto’ games. And electronic gaming machines, poker machines or ‘pokies’ are another. 

• Fact: sports betting is highly visible due to advertising. 

• Fact: sports betting is not the type of gambling that Australians lose the most money on (we’ll get to that soon).

• Fact: gambling can be addictive.

• Fact: many people can gamble without becoming addicted.

• Fact: some people become addicted to gambling and lose thousands of dollars in a short amount of time.

• Fact: gambling addiction is a real disease. It can have very negative physical and mental health consequences, as well as negative consequences for families and relationships. 

• Fact: gambling attracts a lot of different opinions. Some people believe gambling should be banned entirely. Others believe that all advertising of gambling should be banned. And others believe it is a harmless activity that should not be banned. 

Gambling: Key Myths 🙅🏽‍♂️

• Myth: gambling is harmless / is just a bit of fun. It is for some. It is incredibly damaging for others.

• Myth: gambling is just part of sport, it’s always been that way. It’s not. Widespread online gambling is only a pretty recent development (the late 1990s).

• Myth: people who don’t gamble are not fun. Absolute rubbish.

• Myth: you need to gamble to enjoy sport. Also absolute rubbish. Sport is great on its own. 

• Myth: you can ‘outsmart’ betting companies, OR be especially skilled OR have a ‘system’ that means you win most of the time. Nope. Just plain false. People who think this are fooling themselves into thinking they are special. They’re not. 

📺🖥📱 $300 Million Worth of Ads, Everywhere

Bailey, I’m not surprised you’ve seen the ads. They are everywhere. That’s because the gambling industry spends a lot of money to make sure you see them.

$300,000,000 in fact. Every year. That is an incredible amount of money spent on highly targeted, highly focussed advertising. 

Is it worth it? For the gambling companies, studies suggest that it is. Work done by Australian researchers in 2018 and 2019 suggests that exposure to gambling ads makes us:

• bet when we didn’t originally intend to,

• bet more, and,

• bet on things that are less likely to win (things that have higher odds).

So that’s partly why you might be thinking that ‘it must be fine’ to sign up. Because you’re human. Repetition in advertising works. It can make a product seem attractive to a target audience. And $300 million buys a lot of repetition. But just because there’s a lot of ads, it doesn’t mean that signing up to an online betting service is the right choice for you.

It might help to understand why gambling is legal in the first place.

Why Is Gambling Legal?

Why does gambling exist? It’s pretty simple. A lot of people like betting. They always have. 

When enough people like an activity there is demand. And where there is demand plus a ban, people get creative about serving that demand. When something becomes illegal, but there’s still enough demand for it, the activity becomes hidden from view. Sure, governments and law enforcement try to enforce the law. But it doesn’t really work. 

There’s a long history of trying to ban activities like this that some people choose to call ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. At different times in history there have been attempts by governments to ban gambling and alcohol. 

🇺🇸🍺 Banning Alcohol

The biggest experiment of doing this was ‘Prohibition’ in the United States. The Government outlawed alcohol. Nationwide. Yes, really. Between 1920 and 1933 it was illegal to produce, import, transport or sell alcohol in America. 

It didn’t work.

Legitimate bars and clubs were shut down. Breweries were put out of business. But alcohol didn’t go away. 

Bars were replaced by secret drinking locations called ‘speakeasies’, often in the basements of buildings, where people went to drink and dance all night. Large breweries were replaced by smaller scale ‘bootleg’ alcohol makers who brewed high potency ‘moonshine’ liquor in easy to hide locations. 

Organised crime moved in to run these places. The gangsters got rich and powerful. And by 1933 the whole thing was over. The law was changed, the Prohibition era ended, and alcohol was back. 

What usually ends up happening is that governments choose to legalise the activity, put rules around it, and tax it. 

A Bigger Issue

Sports betting gets a lot of negative attention. Part of that stems from just how visible it is. $300 million buys a LOT of ads on TV during sporting broadcasts. Increasingly, it also pays for a lot of ads on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok where ad spend can be hyper-targeted at younger Australians on the platforms where they spend the most time. 

But it’s not where the biggest issue is. When I say ‘biggest issue’ I mean it in the sense of the amount of dollars bet, and lost…

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