Xenophon renews call for gambling crackdown

South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon plans on better regulating online sportsbetting in Australia with the release for comment of a draft bill within the next week.
The bill will reportedly cover the following areas:
–  Restrict advertising of betting venues and online gambling sites on commercial and subscription radio and television during all G-rated programming and sporting programs.
–  Prohibit commentators from quoting betting odds where a commercial arrangement exists between them/the program/the network and the betting agency.
–  Prohibit operators from offering spot betting, exotic bets and in-play betting (where you bet on particular sporting encounters – anything from the exact timing of the first throw-in during a football match to whether the first ball of a cricket match will be a wide or a no-ball, etc.)
–  Prohibit operators from offering bets to be placed on losing outcomes.
–  Possible amendments to address the topic of match-fixing in terms of investigative powers and penalties.
Xenophon who believes a Federal approach to regulating sports betting is the best option, drew angry response from the AFL’s, Andrew Demetriou after he commented that the Leagues approach to sports betting is “narrow-minded and blinkered” because of the revenues generated by commercial arrangements made with betting agencies.
Demetriou responded by saying: “We’re open to sharing all the information, as we’re doing with the Federal Government. We started this process long before there was this ‘betting explosion’ in our game.
Over the last three years we’ve invested heavily in widening our investigative powers, putting on people – we’ve recently hired a fellow called Abraham Haddad, an investigator from the UN – who have extensive powers to investigate under our rules.”
A senior lecturer at Central Queensland University, Doctor Matthew Rockloff, said: “The problem with having gambling on events that are not determined by a random process is there is always the possibility for collusion or corruption of that event.”

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