Berkeley_Eagle
Current Status: 24/7 Manly Fan
Bet on it, an epidemic awaits
MARCH 15, 2013
FORGET for the moment that your humble correspondent is being sued for defamation by Tom Waterhouse.
Ignore the fact he has clearly already taken a rather dim view of comments I have made in this column about the manner of his sponsorship of Australian sport. In fact, for the moment - Your Honour, my learned friends et al, if it please the court - let's leave the whole pure advertising part of sports betting aside. For on Friday last week, a new level was reached in the insidious nature of the bookmaker's invasion of Australian sports.
I refer to the Channel Nine coverage of the Broncos-Manly match last Friday night when Waterhouse had moved from being a semi-detached sponsor of the broadcast - which is troubling enough - to being a quasi-member of the commentary team! Complete with freaking Channel Nine microphone in his hands! Being crossed to before the game, at half-time, and then joining a panel with a suitably embarrassed looking Ray Warren and Peter Sterling at the end of the game, being asked for his thoughts! WTF? We can quite rightly ban smoking advertising and sponsorship of sport because it is not fair to expose children to it before their minds are formed, and yet THIS is allowed to go to air?
For you know it, and I know it. There is now a whole generation of kids growing up watching Australian sport, who think that gambling on sport, discussing the odds, knowing who all the chief bookmakers are and speaking about them in reverential tones - not regarding them as parasites, producing nothing, growing fat on taking money from people who can ill-afford it - is simply the normal way of things.
And why do the kids think these absurdities? Why is it guaranteed there will be an even worse epidemic down the track of these kids developing gambling problems? Simply because we, the older generation, have totally failed them. In face of the rising damp of gambling interests on Australian sport - not just Waterhouse - we, together with the sporting administrations we support, and the governments we elect, have not had the gumption to put a stop to it.
Ultimately it will come down to this: The clubs are driven by the profit motive, as are the codes, as are the networks - they just can't help themselves but to take the lucre. So we must look to the government in this election year. Is it Labor or the Coalition who has the strongest policy proposed to stop gambling's invasion of sports? Let's find out.
Peter fitzsimons
http://m.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/bet-on-it-an-epidemic-awaits-20130315-2g60h.html
MARCH 15, 2013
FORGET for the moment that your humble correspondent is being sued for defamation by Tom Waterhouse.
Ignore the fact he has clearly already taken a rather dim view of comments I have made in this column about the manner of his sponsorship of Australian sport. In fact, for the moment - Your Honour, my learned friends et al, if it please the court - let's leave the whole pure advertising part of sports betting aside. For on Friday last week, a new level was reached in the insidious nature of the bookmaker's invasion of Australian sports.
I refer to the Channel Nine coverage of the Broncos-Manly match last Friday night when Waterhouse had moved from being a semi-detached sponsor of the broadcast - which is troubling enough - to being a quasi-member of the commentary team! Complete with freaking Channel Nine microphone in his hands! Being crossed to before the game, at half-time, and then joining a panel with a suitably embarrassed looking Ray Warren and Peter Sterling at the end of the game, being asked for his thoughts! WTF? We can quite rightly ban smoking advertising and sponsorship of sport because it is not fair to expose children to it before their minds are formed, and yet THIS is allowed to go to air?
For you know it, and I know it. There is now a whole generation of kids growing up watching Australian sport, who think that gambling on sport, discussing the odds, knowing who all the chief bookmakers are and speaking about them in reverential tones - not regarding them as parasites, producing nothing, growing fat on taking money from people who can ill-afford it - is simply the normal way of things.
And why do the kids think these absurdities? Why is it guaranteed there will be an even worse epidemic down the track of these kids developing gambling problems? Simply because we, the older generation, have totally failed them. In face of the rising damp of gambling interests on Australian sport - not just Waterhouse - we, together with the sporting administrations we support, and the governments we elect, have not had the gumption to put a stop to it.
Ultimately it will come down to this: The clubs are driven by the profit motive, as are the codes, as are the networks - they just can't help themselves but to take the lucre. So we must look to the government in this election year. Is it Labor or the Coalition who has the strongest policy proposed to stop gambling's invasion of sports? Let's find out.
Peter fitzsimons
http://m.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/bet-on-it-an-epidemic-awaits-20130315-2g60h.html
