On the eve of a grand final that the AFL predicts will attract the largest audience in the code’s history, CEO Andrew Dillon has acknowledged that there has been too much gambling advertising for the league on television and online.
The AFL chief executive also said the league had received significant feedback from the public saying that “there’s too much” gambling advertising, but Dillon said much of the sports betting advertising – which some political leaders oppose outright – was not during broadcasts of AFL games and therefore was not an AFL issue.
In an interview with this masthead in grand final week, the AFL CEO said the league supported caps on the number of sports betting commercials during broadcasts and gates for online gambling and said the league felt “there has been too much advertising” of sports betting.
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon spoke about the future of the competition.Credit: Joe Armao
The AFL, like the NRL, however, is opposed to a blanket ban on sports betting advertising, which is still lucrative for the broadcast partners who fund the code and other networks.
“We support the policy positions of the government about over-saturation, normalisation, problem gambling – so wanting to minimise that,” said Dillon, who took over as AFL CEO from Gillon McLachlan, who is now CEO of Tabcorp.
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“We think there should be – there has been too much advertising, so we’re a supporter of regulation, we’re a supporter of frequency caps – so every hour having a limited number of ads on TV.
“We think online there should be restrictions so that there’s age-gating, there’s opt-out functionality and those things. So they’re the conversations we’re having with the government.”
“We get a fair bit (of feedback) … like that, people think there’s too much.”