Australian politicians took A$245,000 of match tickets while weighing sports betting ban

Australian politicians were gifted about A$245,000 (R2.9m) in match tickets over nearly two years by the country's most popular sporting leagues as part of a lobbying campaign against a proposed ban on advertising of online gambling, according to Reuters calculations based on government documents.

Lobbying by the gambling industry against the ban has been reported previously in media, but the calculation of the total value of tickets declared by politicians in the parliamentary gift register shows the role played by sporting bodies and provides an amount for the first time.

Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had promised a crackdown on gambling advertising after a 2023 report by his government that recommended a “comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling”.

However, he took the issue off the legislative agenda late last year and has left it to be considered by a new parliament to be formed after a May 3 general election  his party is tipped to win by a narrow margin. Polls show  three-quarters of Australians want a ban.

“We know vested interests have been lobbying hard to prevent a ban and the level of soft diplomacy revealed by the analysis of declared gifts to politicians is deeply concerning,” said David Pocock, an independent senator.

“It is appalling that 18 months after the landmark report into online gambling harm, and after a full term of a Labor government, the prime minister has failed to take any meaningful action to ban gambling advertising.”

Albanese and the Australian Football League (AFL) did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. The National Rugby League (NRL) declined to comment.

Such lobbying is not illegal in Australia but individual gifts worth more than A$300 (R3,626) received by parliamentarians must be reported to the prime minister's office, which maintains the parliamentary gift register, a public database.

It shows politicians from  Australia's main parties received 312 free tickets from June 28 2023, when the government report recommended a ban on online gambling advertisements, to March 28 this year when parliament was dissolved.

There was no price ascribed to the tickets but Reuters calculated their value based on the cheapest corporate box seat. The calculations were verified by Hunter Fujak, senior lecturer in sports management at Deakin University, and Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the University of Technology, Sydney's Centre for Sport, Business and Society.

“It's a reasonable estimate, probably on the conservative side,” Harcourt said.

Albanese received A$29,000 worth of tickets, mostly to grand finals and games played by his NRL home team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, the gift register showed.

Peter Dutton, leader of the opposition conservative coalition, received A$21,350 (R351,000) of tickets during the time, the register shows.

Dutton's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The gifted tickets over the 21-months compared with tickets worth an estimated A$234,000 (R2.8m) given to politicians in the previous parliamentary term from 2019 to 2022, though sports attendance at that time was impacted by Covid-19 shutdowns. Data before 2019 was not available.

Australians lose the most on gambling in the world on a per capita basis, government data shows. Consultancy H2 Gambling Capital estimates gamblers in Australia will lose A$34bn (R422BN) in 2025. The country's sports bodies benefit because, unlike in many other countries, they take a percentage cut of money gambled on their games. They also earn revenues from sponsorship and broadcast rights.

In a confidential submission to government, the NRL said the percentage cut it receives from gambling, about A$70m (R846m) a year, would be more than halved if the ban comes into force, said a person who saw the document. The source declined to be identified because the submission has not been released publicly.

The percentage cut, though a small portion of its A$745m (R9bn) total revenue in 2024, is the NRL's fastest-growing revenue stream after increasing fifteen-fold in a decade, the person said.

The NRL attributes about one-third of the A$400m (R4.8bn)  a year it makes in broadcast rights, its main earner, to sports betting advertising, the person said.

The government did not respond to questions about the submission and its consultation process, while the NRL declined to comment.

After the report recommending reform was published, the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (Compps), a lobbying group for the NRL, the Australian Football League (AFL) and other sports bodies, coordinated a campaign to lobby politicians with consistent messaging against the ban, said three people familiar with the planning.

They declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the topic.

Compps members invited politicians to events and seated them close to sports body officials, mostly from the NRL and AFL, who were briefed on how to discuss the impact of the advertising ban, said two people involved in the planning.

The members shared information about which politicians to target based on who was influential in government or passionate about a particular sport, the people said.

Compps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“You're not only buying them a ticket in the box and giving them hospitality, you've got their ear for the length of the game,” said Charles Livingstone, an associate professor of public health at Monash University and member of the World Health Organisation's Expert Group on Gambling.

“These guys are in a position to plant ideas and influence politicians in ways no-one else can.”

The NRL and the AFL documented their opposition to the ban in messages to Albanese within days of grand final events attended by the prime minister and other senior politicians last year. The AFL proposed an “alternative  regulatory framework”, according to an October 1 email from Albanese's office to Pocock, the independent senator, who shared it with Reuters.

Albanese's office confirmed it had received the correspondence from the NRL and AFL but did not give details.

Louis Francis, a public health academic at Curtin University, said the end result — gambling reform stalled in the face of overwhelming public support — was testament to the “friendships and connections” sporting bodies could make by inviting politicians to games.

Free tickets for politicians amounted to “a really small price to pay to get access to political decisionmakers”, she said.

“And the return is great.”

Reuters