Sport is considered one of the most popular entertainment activities in Australia. Sports like cricket are so popular that, in fact, the country is famous for its success in them. Some of the most popular sports in Australia are swimming, soccer, basketball, cricket, etc.
Not only do they love sports, but they also enjoy betting money on their outcomes. Sports betting has become so rampant in Australia that the country has actually developed some sort of a betting problem.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how much money is spent in the Australian sports betting industry and how much of it is actually lost.
Sports betting in Australia
As we mentioned above, Australians love gambling and betting on sports. Among their most favorite money-betting activities are electronic gaming and casinos, horse racing, and sports betting.
According to the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office data, which has been operating for 34 years and publishing reports annually, the Australians spent almost $175 billion on online casino Australia, betting, and lotteries – pokies, as they like to call them, in 2016-2017 (the most recent data).
As for horse racing, the amount spent on betting hit $24 billion (7% more than the previous year), while the sports betting accounts for $10.1 billion, which has also seen an increase of 15% than the last year.
In total, in the years 2016-2017 Australians bet $209 billion on pokies, races, and sports, which is a 0.7% ($1.5 billion) increase over the previous year. If you take Australia’s adult population of almost 19 million, the amount spent on gambling reaches $11,000 per capita.
Money lost on gambling
But betting alone is not even a problem. What’s more alarming than that is that Australians also lose a ton of money on gambling. According to the same statistics from Queensland, on just pokies, Australians have lost $19.3 billion in 2016-2017 ($1,020 per capita).
On racing, the loss of money reached $3.3 billion ($174 per capita), while on sports betting, it was almost $1.1 billion ($59 per capita)
In total, Australians have lost almost $24 billion on gambling, which is definitely an outrageous indicator. According to the clinical lead at St Vincent’s Hospital’s Gambling Treatment Program in Sydney, Dr. Kate Fennessy, this problem is mostly felt by the problem gamblers who have developed an addiction to money betting.
“Most people are buying a lottery ticket or they’re spending twenty bucks on the spring racing carnival,” said Dr. Fennessy, “and the people who fall foul of this behavior are the people who are spending vast amounts of money.”
Rise of mobile devices and advertisement
One of the many reasons why people are increasingly betting and losing their money is the development of mobile devices. According to the clinicians, most of the patients with gambling addiction are attracted by the ease of betting money on sports or racing via their phones.
According to Dr. Chris Hunt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney’s Gambling Treatment and Research Centre, the gambling problem is further escalated by the intersection of sports and gambling industry. In his opinion, sport is a great way of entertainment but there must be some second thought about how sports companies are promoting gambling on their platforms.
Australia has a great love for sports. Football, cricket, basketball, and rugby, among many other sports, are enjoyed by millions of Australians.
However, in recent years, they have developed a harmful relationship between sports and gambling. Three most prevalent gambling industries in the country – pokies, horse racing, and sports betting – are taking up the majority of betting finances that reach hundreds of billions of dollars.
With an annual loss of more than $24 billion on gambling, Australians have to reevaluate their dependency on gambling.