Flutter fumbles

Yes, we know we’ve done Pokies before. But this is different, promise.

Sports betting is everywhere. In Australia, the amount of men having a flutter on sport rose 57.6% in seven years. 

If you watch a game of pretty much anything, you cannot avoid the pleas to gamble. This is despite it being two years since a House of Representatives report recommended a ban on gambling advertising. Since that report, politicians have accepted over $147,000 of match tickets.

Australia is a world leader in gambling, but the wildest stories are happening overseas.

Turkish authorities suspended 1,042 players for gambling offences, meaning the two lowest national leagues had to be halted due to a lack of players to compete - a situation you would probably have got decent odds on.

In the US, where sports betting has gone from $5 billion in 2018 to nearly $150 billion last year, the NBA has been dragged through the mud by allegations of game rigging. 

The gambling industry is a money making machine, with all the resources and motivation to bend the sporting world to its will. 

But as Atlantic writer Derek Thompson points out in his fantastic and terrifying newsletter, it’s also a consequence of “a society [that] pushes its citizens to take financial risks.” Betting is a get-rich-quick scheme in a world where getting rich slowly feels impossible.

There are plenty of moral arguments, put forward to force and passion by tireless advocates, against sports betting. But perhaps the real answer is to alleviate the need to have a flutter at all.