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Ted, are you trying to say that there's one or two other things happening in the world at the moment that might overshadow em gambling, advertising, regulation? That does surprise me. In Australia, a political conflict spanning more than three years appears to be nearing resolution. Ahead of the Easter break, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese presented a landmark framework of new federal gambling advertising laws set to be implemented from 2027. The Labour government says the settlement is designed to break the normalisation loop of gambling in media, with measures led by caps on advertising and a live sports blackout. However, prolonged process and indecision has proved politically damaging for the Labour government, with the government rejecting several key measures proposed in the 2023 Murphy Report. So what's the future for Australian gambling and how will the industry adapt? Welcome back to iGaming Daily, supported by Optmove, the creator of positionless marketing and the number one player engagement solution for sports betting and iGaming operators. I'm Charlie Horner and today to dissect all of this with me is SBC media editor at large, Ted Manmuir and editor of SBC News, Ted Olmclay. Ted Em, how's things? Very well, Charlie. And just sorry I was carrying some windows before I get the bollocking from an air, but yes, I'm here, I'm here, present. Fantastic. Ted Olsi, how are you? Yeah, pretty good. Thank you, Charlie. um Looking forward to getting into this one, Ted. Obviously broke this em while I was on leave last week, I think. But you have some interesting stuff coming out from Australia and following up quite well from the conversation you and I had with IMGL last week as well. Yeah, absolutely. We'll reference that just before we kick into this. last week we spoke with Jamie Nettleton, partner at Addison's Lawyers, and who is also a member of IMGL. That's episode number 744 and we do discuss a lot of this in detail. It just so happened that we published that episode and had that conversation just before the government of Australia published its judgments on gambling advertising. So yeah, check that one out if you feel the need to do so. It's really interesting to get a lawyer's perspective. But Ted M, let's kick things off today and reflect on what the government has. brought into play. let's run through some of the headline restrictions coming into play next year. Yes, so let me just give you the top down of what's going on in Australia. From the 1st of January, 2027, Australia will move to tighten its federal laws on gambling advertising. The primary measure is that TV gambling ads will be capped at three per hour between 6am and 8.30pm with a full blackout during live sports broadcasts in that same window. Radio ads will be banned during school commutes and online ads would be limited to logged in age gating and age verification of above 18, above the age of 18. And all advertising, all digital advertising must have opt out controls. And of the other kind of major measure that will be implemented in 2027 is that they're going to phase out the gambling branding and gambling sponsorships Australian sports on player on teenage kits and on official uniforms. So from 2027, what the Labour government are proposing is that as they said, when they issued or when they settle on this is that they want to break the normalization of gambling advertising in Australia. Yeah, there's some fundamental changes that are coming in, aren't they, Ted? It's going to change the way that operators are able to advertise themselves from next year onwards. And it's been a very politically charged time, and Ted O'See, we discussed this last week with Jamie Nettleton. Maybe it would be good to revisit why the sensitivities are so high with regards to gambling advertising in Australia and why the government has had to come in with such sweeping measures. I think the story is very similar to what we've seen play out in many other gamma markets, such as the one we're currently sat in, the UK. Australia is a very mature market. It's a very lucrative one, worth billions of Aussie dollars. And like many mature markets, it has faced a lot of political scrutiny, public and political scrutiny in recent years. A lot of that focus has as with other countries, been on the societal impact. There's uh quite an active discussion about gambling harm in Australia and the rates of it there are noticeably higher than some other countries, including, again, the UK. And like a lot of other nations, gambling advertising has been pushed to the forefront of this, I think chiefly for the reason that it is obviously the most visible form of the industry to many people, unless you're going out. searching for somewhere to put a bet on. The most common place you will see a company's logos and so on is uh via marketing on the television in public and perhaps most prominently for a lot of people via sports teams. Australia is a very sports mad country. Obviously you've got the the odd rules football, the National Rugby League, cricket, uh football, soccer, south football, whatever you want to call it. Rugby Union all have a huge following there. And gambling advertising, over the years, has been seen in the broadcasts of these sports via adverts on TV, via sponsorships, LED, perimeter advertising sort of stuff. And like with lot of other countries, that has really caught a lot of political scrutiny. uh Advocates for reform want to see a reduction in it, and they believe that will lead to a reduction in problem gambling and gambling-related harm in Australia. I think that's the in my opinion, of what's been going on. Yeah, so it's a common thread across a lot of mature markets across the globe, not just in Australia, is it? But Ted, this is the culmination of a three-year long debate, perhaps even longer in Australia, with the publication of that Murphy Report in 2023. But that had 31 different recommendations within it. Why has the Albanese government decided to intervene on gambling advertising in particular and maybe not some of the other recommendations within that report? What's your sense from what's going on there? I wouldn't call it an intervention. I think that this was kind of a point of inflection where the Labour government needed to kind of find a resolution on gambling advertising. It was a debate or a point of conflict that really, you know, ditched Murphy report and its recommendations to apply a phased out approach to a blanket ban on gambling advertising to be imposed, that would have been imposed by now, by 2026. uh Peter Murphy did pass away, they did divide the Labour government in terms of the backbench and its leadership on what approach to take to gambling advertising. And it's been a point of criticism for Albanese and his management of labor ranks. Now, I think that in 2026, it was make or break in as to in which direction he would take uh or how he would stamp his resolutions on gambling advertising. We saw that come out this weekend. Again, I don't think that this has kind of pleased any of the camps, distilled divisions across the board on how the matter has been kind of will proceed. But at least we're at a point of settlement. If I could just add as well, know, on maybe touching on the government's motivations a bit, Charlie, I think as Ted mentioned, we've got the Murphy report penned by the late MP Peter Murphy. There were 31 recommendations in that. the clampdown on gambling advertising was just one of them. But I think the reason why the government would go in so heavily on this as a start point and make a big deal out of it is because of what I mentioned earlier about the visibility of it. For the average member of the public who doesn't gamble, they're not going to know or maybe even care that much about things like whether we need a national gambling regulator or a sole gambling authority or not like what we talked about with IMGL. oh they're not going be too clued in on AML requirements, player protection requirements, deposit limits, stuff like that. What they do see regularly is advertising and that's probably going to be the thing that they have more of a gripe with. it's again, similar to like what we've talked about over the markets, like the Netherlands, Belgium, the big debate about sports sponsorship in the UK. It's the one that's the most visible and flashy to people and which catches their attention and which is a source of frustration for many people. And it's for a lot of governments, including now Australia, it's going to be a bit of a quick fix. I do think the government were, you we talked, I've talked about this on SPC News and I think we've mentioned it on our gaming daily before as well. The government were a bit slow in implementing this, slower than a lot of reform and advocates for reform in Australia would like. Partly, I think that was partly due to the fact that there was an election last year and there was some speculation on Australia that the government. didn't, the Labour government didn't want to have a potentially very costly public showdown with the industry and with broadcasters ahead of that election. Broadcasters are quite an important stakeholder in this because a lot of them make quite a considerable amount of money from gambling advertising. I think it was Nine Network is one of Australia's biggest broadcasters and they made some comments about it last year about what cuts to sponsorship and TV gambling advertising would have on their revenues. So that was partly the reason why this was delayed. But yeah, ultimately, I think it comes down to the fact that cutting advertising is the most visible way a government can come across as saying, we're doing something about em the industry and its visibility and its societal impact in a way that a lot of people, the majority of people can understand better than some of the more intricate elements of gambling regulation and the legislation behind it. And talking about visibility and social impact, this is a government who has intervened on social media and big tech. know that Australia banned social media for under 16, so maybe this is just a continuation of those kind of consumer protection kind of policies. Now, before we go to a break, Ted M, what's the industry reaction been from operators or stakeholders? Because we know that these types... These types of interventions, new regimes don't particularly go down too well, particularly when they're quite stringent. So has there been any industry action over the last few days? Okay, so I think when we look at Australia, and especially on this subject matter that has dragged out now, the resolution needed to, you know, we need to get to the point of resolution. And I think that the majority of operators accepted that there would be some form of restrictions coming in as long as it wasn't a blanket ban. Where I think there's going be divisions is on the sponsorship and how that gets integrated. The fact that they can no longer have fronted shirts and uh instead of advertising, especially on contracts that have been paid out. So how the Labour government is going to phase that in, in over what period that gets eliminated. Then I think you have to look at kind of the reformist camp, which have been most critical of the Labour government. And, you know, This is an opposition that was, you know, firmly attached to that three year phase out of implementing a blanket ban on uh gambling advertising. And one of the reasons why is that the key, the words people pointing to this is because of the, you know, high uh gambling addiction rate or the higher gambling addiction rate Australia has over kind of other Western countries. think it's at about 300,000 suffer from the highest grade of of gambling disorders in Australia and they spend around a pound, 28 billion Australian dollars on gambling losses. So there are divisions everywhere. I don't think that these settlements kind of satisfy anyone, but at least it's progressing in some sort. Yeah, I don't think with debates like this you can get to a point where you satisfy everyone. know, the reformists are always gonna want the extremes and, you the industry always wants as little regulation as possible, right? So, yeah, it's tough to please everyone, but the government has tried its best, I suppose. Let's go for a quick break, Ted and Ted, and we'll come back and we'll discuss. Some of the implications. Welcome back to iGaming Daily. Now, we talked about it the first half a little bit, but this has been a long time since the Murphy Report came out in 2023. Lots has happened since then, lots of criticism of the government, but why did Labour ultimately fall short of implementing the report's full recommendations? We said that there's 31 of them. Yeah, why is the government sort of ignored the rest of the report? Ted M, what do you think? I think you've to be reflective of the three-year process to get these settlements across the line. And first of all, the big point of criticism is that Anthony Albanese, was one of his primary pledges when he campaigned and when he secured the Labour's election victory that he would within pretty much six to 12 months implement an overhaul of Australia's gambling laws. They have done that to some extent in terms of the credit card ban and implementing a uh new kind of federal self-exclusion scheme for online gambling. But again, they haven't progressed on core measures. Australia still doesn't have a federal gambling authority. Much of the work is dedicated to other uh agencies. The underlying fault is that it appears that he dropped or he completely dropped the ball on gambling advertising, which was, as Ted mentioned, it was this point of kind of annoyance and grievance for the general public. It was seen as an easy victory for Labour to kind of implement, not even not necessarily a full blanket ban, but just some key measures. And it's taken them three years to apply what is effectively just a watershed of, you know, of a watershed of restrictions. And thus, I don't think that any of these critics are satisfied by that. And again, it comes down to very much that you are a victim of what you pledged. And that's the case with Anthony Albanese. Yeah, Ted Ose, how do you reflect on the political impact of this? Because as Ted says, Albanese promised to do this within a short time period. He was first voted in as PM in 2022, won a second term last year. And this is a democracy that runs in three-year cycles as well, so if you take three years to achieve something, you might not be able to actually fulfil what you tell the public you're going to do. So how do you reflect on some of those political damages that the government might face? I mean, yeah, it probably might not reflect too well on them in terms of efficiency, em given how long it's taken and uh the delays and so on. I guess we do always have to remember that politics, especially in democratic countries, takes time. The gambling act review in the UK took three years, didn't it? It started in December 2020. White Paper was published in April 2023, and the recommendations of that still being adopted now. So when you've got these things, these quite big legislative and regulatory overhauls, there's a lot of things to consider and there's a lot of lobbying from all sides, bit like what you mentioned Charlie about gambling reform, lobbyists wanting to see more changes, wanting to see more stringent, extensive changes. Then you've got the industry and other stakeholders on the other side of things arguing back whether that's... the bookmakers themselves or sporting stakeholders like racing and football, rugby, so on and so on. Although I mean, admittedly, think some NRL teams have been kind of distancing themselves a bit from the industry for a while now. Then you've got the broadcasters, you know, there's a lot of competing factors at play. And maybe there's just something, not to sound a bit cynical, but maybe another aspect of it is that for a government, any government really, and for many voters, The legislative and regulatory frameworks affecting the gambling industry aren't exactly going to be front and centre, are they? For the most part. Sure, people have an opinion about it. People might have quite a strongly held opinion, but ultimately they're going to care more about the economy, foreign policy, domestic issues, climate change, any number of issues that for many people are more pressing than gambling advertising. or something like that. Teddy, you're trying to say that there's one or two other things happening in the world at the moment that might overshadow gambling, advertising, regulation. That does surprise me. Ted M, let's look at this from the industry lens, though, uh because obviously this does have a political outcome, but for iGaming Daily, we want to look at how it's going to impact our sector. How will this... tied to advertising regulations that reshape the competitive dynamics of the market in Australia, because it's a mature market, there's plenty of competition. Does this re-regulation change things at all for you? I think this is going to be an interesting dynamic about how... the gambling licenses in Australia kind of navigate this. And especially because in Australia you've got kind of your, you're very kind of localized brands, brands that have been there for a number of years versus new challenges and also versus kind of the, the new kind of international law, you you like to feel your Unibet, your Bet 365, so trying to kind of take market share out there. So I don't necessarily think that, you know, the sponsorship or high advertising spend is over. I just think that it's going to kind of be more tactical. And again, even focusing on much more on kind of partnerships and also kind of key, key points of the calendar, i.e. the, the, the spring festival, the spring carnival for racing. So I think that there is, there might be a lot of kind of changing dynamics, especially in the marketing area of Australian. of this showing sports. obviously we report on Australia quite extensively on SPC News, Ted. So from your editorial perspective, how are you looking at this in terms of how these reforms might change the market in the years to come? I think the point that Ted made, just seeing how companies respond to any pressures around marketing, how our companies are going to start preparing for that is going to be is going to be quite interesting because you know a bit like what's happened in other markets I've said that a million times this podcast sorry you know companies are going to have to think outside the box and adjust their approach a bit if we can't sponsor on the front of sports team shirts anymore if we can't advertise via TV how are going to get our name out there how are we going to promote ourselves against competition in a country where there are some very established operators like obviously Tabcor and Entains, Brands, Flutter, Sportsbet and so on. I think another interesting point about Australia that's something we've been following a bit is kind of the M &A activity around the market. For a market that's been on the cusp of what looked to be a very big regulatory overhaul for quite some time and which has seen a lot of, as we've talked about extensively today, political scrutiny and public scrutiny about the industry and its societal impact. For a market that's been facing this, Australia's still been getting a fair bit of interest from both domestic and international stakeholders. We obviously had the bidding battle between Better and Mixi for points bet last year. There's a newcomer came on the block. Was that either at the start of this year or late? I think it was earlier this year, wasn't it, that Crown Bet launched a joint initiative between Betfair and Betmakers. There was another market launch via M &A at the start of this year as well. So, you know, we still see some activity around then. I think it'll be interesting to see whether that slows down now that it's been confirmed that marketing is going to be getting cut back or if some companies think, right, now's the time to strike because this is going to disrupt the traditional structure. This is going to disrupt the old guard, I guess. So that's the long term approach, but there's, you know, there's a few months, there's We're only a quarter of the way through the year. So what should we be looking out for in Australia throughout the remainder of 2026 then, as we move closer towards these advertising reforms? it a case of watching the adjustments be made gradually or is there a wider macro trend that you would expect to see? Ted M, how about you go first on this one? I think that, okay, looking at, you know, On page, look at the resolutions that have been promoted. think now we're to kind of look at the realities of the technical implementation, especially here in online targeting. What are the boundaries? What are the parameters? And also, uh I'd also say that kind of the, need to get kind of these definitions down and what they mean by, by the promotion of odd style content. And then finally also how they're going to putting these kind of sponsorship restrictions for live marketing on stadium branding uniforms, what kind of grace period they're going to give to advertisers and how the kind of final phases of those contracts are going to be seen through. Look, one thing is demanding change. The other thing is kind of implementing it and it's two very, very separate things. Yeah, sounds very, complicated and technical indeed. Ted O'See, what are you keeping an eye out for? for Australia for the remainder of 2026? I think really, think Ted's hit the nail on the head there really. em I just think the other things to look out for is yeah how the industry is going to respond, how they're going to prepare, em whether this affects people's em outlook on the market in terms of yeah future growth and future prospects, future market launches and then maybe just see how the discussion pans out. whether it's going to be similar to some of the countries we see in Europe where, you know, there's discussion about is this going to affect the black market? Is there going to be an increase in illicit gaming? Whether the industry starts arguing that case a bit more heavily? Potentially what pushback there could be? I think could be another interesting thing to keep an eye on. All right, fantastic. Well, Ted, Ted, we'll leave it there. Thanks ever so much for taking the time and discussing some of your thoughts and opinions on this one. Thank you to Optmoo for sponsoring the show and to our audience if you want to hear more about this story. Remember just to check out episode 744 for our chat with Jamie Nettleton who's a lawyer out in Australia. But thank you ever so much for tuning into today's episode of iGaming Daily and come back tomorrow to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news. you