Footy Without Gambling? Mate, Let’s Have the Conversation

Here’s a question that’s been rattling around my head all week: if you stripped every single gambling logo, every odds update, every “bet now” banner out of the AFL, would the game still stand up on its own two feet?

Spoiler: of course it would. But you wouldn’t know that from the way the industry talks about it.

The Albanese government finally — finally — got around to responding to its own gambling inquiry this week. And when did they drop this response? Budget Day. The single busiest news day on the political calendar. Make of that what you will. Whether it was a deliberate case of burying the lede or just spectacularly bad timing, plenty of people reckon it stunk. I’m not going to tell you which it was, but I’ll say it raised more than a few eyebrows around the traps.

Let’s Set the Scene

The inquiry itself had been sitting there for the better part of three years. Three years! That’s longer than some of my mates have been waiting for Collingwood to win another flag — and trust me, that feels like an eternity too. The inquiry, led by Labor MP Peta Murphy before her tragic passing, produced a serious, well-researched report that called for meaningful reductions in gambling advertising, particularly the kind that wallpapers every live sport broadcast in this country.

The government’s response has been described as cautious. Some would say timid. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about why a government might tread carefully around an industry that spends enormous sums on lobbying and advertising.

But here’s the thing — this is a footy column, not a politics column. So let’s talk about what it means for the game we love.

The AFL’s Cozy Relationship With the Punt

Let’s be honest with each other. The AFL and gambling have been in a pretty close embrace for a long time now. We’re talking broadcast partnerships, club sponsorships, in-ground advertising, and the relentless odds updates that get pumped through your television screen during every single quarter of every single game.

I grew up watching footy and the only gambling I saw was Grandad sneaking a form guide under his Sherrins jumper at the MCG. Now you can’t watch three minutes of live footy without being told what the current line is and invited to top up your account. It’s definately changed the texture of how we consume the game, and not always for the better.

To be fair to the AFL, they didn’t exactly pioneer this. The whole sports-betting advertising explosion happened across every code, every sport, every broadcaster. But that doesn’t mean the AFL gets to shrug its shoulders and pretend it has no responsibility here.

The “Footy Can’t Survive Without It” Myth

Every time gambling reform gets raised, someone in a suit trots out the line that sport simply cannot function without betting revenue and advertising. Clubs need the money. Broadcasters need the engagement. The product would suffer.

Let me push back on that pretty hard.

Footy existed for over a hundred years before wagering companies became the dominant sponsors of the competition. The VFL — and later the AFL — built enormous cultural institutions on the back of passionate supporters, local communities, and teh sheer quality of the game itself. The Western Bulldogs didn’t win the 2016 premiership because of a gambling partner. Collingwood didn’t build the most powerful supporter base in the country because of a betting app. People love this game because it is extraordinary, full stop.

The argument that revenue would collapse without gambling is worth interrogating. Would some money leave the system? Yes, probably. Would smart commercial minds find alternative revenue streams? Almost certainly. Have other jurisdictions and codes managed to reduce gambling advertising without the whole thing falling apart? You can look that up yourself.

What the Research Actually Says

Here’s where I put on my serious hat for a moment, and I mean it.

The evidence on gambling harm in Australia is not ambiguous. We are one of the biggest per-capita gambling losers in the world. Problem gambling destroys families, wrecks mental health, and hits working-class communities hardest. These aren’t abstract statistics — they’re real people in real suburbs, including plenty of footy-mad ones.

When gambling advertising is woven into the fabric of a sport that kids grow up watching, when you normalise the punt as just part of the match-day experience, you are doing something with consequences. The inquiry recognised this. A lot of the community submissions recognised this. It’s not a fringe position anymore — if it ever was.

And look, I love a punt as much as the next bloke. I’m not going to stand here on a soapbox and pretend I’ve never put a few bucks on the Pies to cover the line. But there’s a difference between adults making informed choices in a regulated environment and saturation advertising that’s effectively aimed at making betting feel as natural as buying a meat pie at three-quarter time.

What Should the AFL Actually Do?

This is where it gets practical. A few things the AFL should of been doing already, and should accelerate regardless of what the government ultimately legislates:

• Remove in-play odds updates from broadcasts. There is no good reason that a 10-year-old watching the Pies run over the top of Carlton needs to know the current line. None.
• Phase out club-level gambling sponsorships. Clubs are community organisations. They carry enormous trust. That trust shouldn’t be for sale to a wagering company.
• Invest in genuine education programs. Not the performative “gamble responsibly” tag at the end of an ad, but real, funded, community-facing programs that give people real tools.
• Work proactively with the government rather than lobbying against every proposed restriction. Be on the right side of this one.

Will it cost money? In the short term, probably yes. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely yes. Carn the Pies.

The Bigger Picture for Our Game

Look, I’m a Collingwood man. I’ve sat through enough heartbreak and enough glory to know that what keeps bringing me back to the MCG has nothing to do with what odds Sportsbet is offering on the first goal scorer. It’s the contest. It’s the bump. It’s the roar of eighty thousand people when a raking kick finds its target sixty metres out.

That’s the product. That’s what the AFL is actually selling. And it’s a brilliant product that doesn’t need to be propped up by a wagering company’s logo to justify its existence.

The government’s response to the inquiry may have been cautious. It may have been timed conveniently to get lost in the Budget noise. But the conversation is not going away, and the AFL should stop waiting to be dragged along by legislation and start leading on this issue themselves.

The game is bigger than the punt. It always has been. It’s time we started acting like it.