Australian Betting Operator Argues For More Regulation To Level Playing Field

The Melbourne, Australia paper Herald Sun reported on remarks made by David Attenborough, the chief executive of Tabcorp, a leading Australian gambling company. His remarks were made at a luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia. As an aside, I find that an interesting name of an organization. I understand an Australian Chamber of Commerce, but an American Chamber of Commerce in Australia? They however are legit and focus on international commerce, particularly between the two countries.

His point was that Tabcorp was following the law and allowing sports betting via telephone but not online. However, there were operators taking online sports bets that were not being taken to task for violating the restrictions contained in the Interactive Gambling Act. That is reasonable. If a government is going to place restrictions, the legitimate operators are competitively hurt if they are the only ones to follow the law.

But what I feel are the most poignant comments by Mr. Attenborough were the generic comments regarding sports and sports betting. He is spot on and governments need to grasp and accept this reality. His two key points are:

1. Sports betting is becoming "part of everyday entertainment"
   
2. "Sport is much more exciting when you bet on it"

Absolutely true and blatantly obvious if you look at the amount of sports betting going on globally, both legal and illegal.

The skill game of fantasy sports also benefits from these truisms. Those who play fantasy sports do have their enjoyment of the event enhanced by tracking their team, interacting with the other participants in their league, etc.

Governments need to get on the winner of regulation rather than the loser of prohibition. Prohibition does not prohibit anything if the activity is in high demand - it just creates a lucrative and unregulated black market, which is not at all helpful.

Even with this issue, Australia does seem to get it much better than the U.S. There is an earlier post that discusses partnerships between Australian professional sports teams and online gambling firms. For additional information on Australian gambling, check out this post from January of 2011.

For those interested in a not so well published topic, this post discusses the linkage of the founders of professional football (NFL) in the U.S. and gambling. Also the post discusses how the NFL works with the legal bookmakers to help protect the integrity of the games by detection and reporting of unusual betting patterns. This idea is another good reason for Australia to further embrace legal and regulated sports betting, even online.