Danger Down Under with Underage Gambling
Keeping online casinos afloat requires a constant focus on tempting new customers. In Australia, accusations are coming in, claiming that more could be done to keep underage children away from gambling.
If no new online casino customers are created, gambling establishments will have a hard time growing their businesses. After all, every once in a while, a few customers will drop out, and if there aren’t new ones replacing them, casinos could slowly whither down and die.
Obviously, the solution to this problem should not be targeting those under the legal age of 18. Yet, this is exactly what some say is happening at online casinos in Australia.
According to the Alliance for Gambling Reform, 430,000 children under the age of as young as 16 could be betting online in Australia. A well-known Australian Baptist minister Timothy Costello blames the lack of federal regulation on gambling advertising, claiming it has ”horrific and lifelong” implications.
Reviewing Australian gambling reform with parliamentarians, Costello stated that his opinion on gambling losses had changed. Originally, he believed Australians were just more enthusiastic about gambling than everyone else. Now he considers Australians topping the charts of most active gamblers in the world is actually due to lack of regulation.
The truth is, we’ve had the worst policies, the least regulation of gambling. That is why we have the greatest losses.
Timothy Costello
Just last month, the Australian parliamentary took part in an inquiry examining whether laws in place were enough to protect children from gambling advertisements. This was when two major gambling brands Ladbrokes and Sportsbet weighed in, defending their responsible gambling tools and other such policies.
Ladbrokes also stated that it supports new laws meant to ban showing odds in sports broadcasts as well as banning gambling ads during early TV hours.
Conclusion
Just recently, we reported news on new Irish gambling laws stifling advertising. Adding new regulations for gambling seems to be a common theme in many parts of the world—and for good reason.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m not that knowledgeable about gambling regulations in different countries. Still, it makes sense that it’s not just all about people being enthusiastic gamblers when it’s permitted to advertise gambling on national TV during child-friendly hours. To me, this sounds like a bad oversight from the government. If you don’t want people to think about gambling all the time, perhaps you shouldn’t remind them about it all the time.
These same criticisms could also be applied to Finland, which is another gambling-crazy nation. In this dark Nordic country, you will find slot machines in just about every grocery store and petrol station. Because of this, it is definitely no wonder the Finns are such active gamblers!
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