Has the internet ruined Gambling?
It promised to modernise an age-old activity, bringing new convenience to a quick thrill.
Instead, it’s delivered a predatory, 24/7 addiction machine that exploits our psychology with algorithms, leading to what many consider a serious public health crisis.
In this episode, Mark Kempster - a gambling reform advocate, and member of Australia’s Alliance For Gambling Reform’s Voices of Lived Experience program - joins us to explore the profound impact of the internet and technology on gambling behaviours, the addictive design of digital gambling apps, and the normalisation of online gambling in society.
We also look at the targeting of vulnerable demographics, the psychological effects of gambling, and the urgent need for reform and regulation to protect individuals and communities from the growing harms of online and digital gambling.
Gareth King (00:33)
Mark, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.
Mark Kempster (00:38)
Mate, anytime, glad to be on.
Gareth King (00:40)
Before we get into it today, can you just tell us a bit about the work that you do and the journey that's led you to this point?
Mark Kempster (00:45)
Yeah, certainly. So all my young adult life into my 20s, I developed, I had a gambling addiction, and it went for at least 10 years of my life, probably a little bit more when I really think about it. But yeah, so I battled that for a really long time, it had a huge effect on my life and to this day still affects me to an extent. But yeah, I managed to get past it now. I'll be six years without a bet tomorrow. So good time to come on which is kind of an anniversary for me. But yeah, now I work alongside the Alliance of Gambling Reform as a lived experience advocate. So I really try to push for reforms and trying to help as many people as I can to not go down the path I did, and try and make it safer for people to enjoy a bit without developing an addiction.
Gareth King (01:34)
Yeah, brilliant. I mean, look, I’m sure everybody that's been awake for the last decade or so has just seen how much gambling and normalisation of it has permeated everything. We're going to talk about how all of that's happened today, but we are also going to be talking about how the internet and tech has transformed gambling to the beast that it is today. Looking back, what has surprised you the most at how the impact of the internet and technology has played out in the gambling space so far?
Mark Kempster (02:05)
it changed my life. I was someone who enjoyed a bet on a weekend after I played footy when you had to physically go and have a bet at the pub or at the local TAB, to someone who without the internet wouldn't have been able to do, like would have probably still been okay doing that for most of the time. But once we developed sports bet apps and gambling apps in Australia, it's had a huge effect on the way we gamble in Australia.
It's had a huge effect on the mental health of people in Australia, and it's had a huge effect on communities in general with the amount of other things that come out of addictions that have been caused by our move to gamble online and have it in our pockets every day of week.
Gareth King (02:44)
It is an issue that we have been hearing about it feels like forever within Australia. I can't even recall how long I've been hearing stories of people that would get their pay and just like put it straight into the pokies. And we've known that they've been this crazy problem and it feels like there's constantly talk of some kind of reform and, it never happens. And we know that pokies provide so much revenue to the venues that they're in. Those you have to actually go and physically enter the space to sit down and do it.
Now, as we all know, through the rise of smartphones and the internet, like this access that now we have is constantly in your pocket 24/7, and we all know people react the way they react to their phone. They're constantly checking it, constantly get a notification, see what's going on.
If someone's a heroin addict, like the worst thing in the world, people see as the dealer trying to push heroin on a heroin addict, but it feels like gambling, it's that is so normal and there's so many platforms out there. Like I'm losing count of how many I see popping up. You can't turn on the TV without seeing marketing and advertising for gambling, let alone any kind of sporting event, which feels like it's just become so ingrained within the experience of sport itself.
But when it does come to those phone-based gambling apps, can you explain to us how the design of those makes them just so addictive for users?
Mark Kempster (04:09)
Well, they're designed to keep you betting as long as possible. And I know for a fact that the companies use psychologists to make sure that you are in the app as long as possible, like where they don't tell you how there's no time. You can't see the time on the app. So, you don't know how long we've been in there, like with the pokie machine they have. They make it very easy to deposit money, but make it very hard to withdraw money on the apps.
They give you bonus bets, give you inducements to continue to bet for as long as possible. And they always ask you the questions like, what can we do to help you with your betting? And they want to make it a community. They want to have this huge bet with mates idea that, which is really a toxic thing to put out into the world that you'll enjoy your activity or your sport or whatever you're watching more if you're betting on it with your mates.
So they make it, they're trying to make it a community of people to normalise it across Australia. And they've done a really good job with it. You said like, see it everywhere. We can't get away from it. I feel like I probably noticed it more than the normal person in Australia, but even you saying that you notice it so much Gareth, it's just that they have intrinsically tried to link betting with sport or betting with anything really.
Like you can bet on MasterChef, you can bet on the stocks are going to go up and down, you can bet on interest rates going up and down, things on these lines. So, they've made it part of everyday life, and trying to normalise it and make their apps as easy to use and as easy as possible to try and keep you there longer is their whole goal with what they're trying to do at the moment.
Gareth King (05:29)
Yeah, look, and that's, that's wholly unsurprising, especially as we know that the way that all these social media apps, whatever, are built for that, to get people in and use them as long as possible. I think for me, the distinction between say, I don't know, someone that claims to be just addicted to TikTok, you know what I mean? Like they're, wasting time consuming whatever videos and content they're looking at, but it doesn't have that financial implication, which to me is the really insidious thing about the way that these gambling apps have developed.
You know, that's interesting to hear as well. They make it really difficult to take the money out. And it makes me think back to, you know, those shady films you've watched, like Vegas casinos, you know what I mean? Like someone wins big and rather than letting you cash out they’ll comp you a room and all of these other stuff to hopefully win it back.
But I think that if, if someone does have that addiction, whether it's an addiction or just a compulsion to be on the phone just in general, and then that opportunity is there, it's just frictionless, just so easy for them to just keep going and going and going. Obviously that type of personality has always been there. Do you think that it's a case that this online and app-based betting targets those people simply because the barriers to reaching them are largely removed? Or do you think that these apps are potentially creating more of those people, simply by the nature of the way that we interact with our phones and technology in general? So they use that kind of side door to bring in the gambling aspect.
Mark Kempster (07:01)
I think it's creating more of them. I think there's always, as you said, there's always been people with personalities like that. I think the way they have set the industry up now and the way they deliberately target specific demographics of people who will, but basically their whole goal is to try and target 18-34 year olds in the community, whether it's mainly males, but they do target females as well these days with it, because they're targeting people whose brains are still developing at the time.
And they want to intrinsically link gambling with community basically and make it look like they're the good guys and they're just there to offer you some good times with your mates. So, I think it's creating more people like that with the way they've set things up. And in particular with inducements, they offer like the bonus bets and deposit matches and the thousands of things that I've seen now that other people have shown me now and helping people recover like, it's absolutely quite criminal some of the stuff these guys are offering to try and keep you betting longer. It's really nasty stuff the way they kind of hook you onto the loop with it. As you said, there was definitely some of it to start with, but yeah, it's getting out of hand at the moment.
Gareth King (08:13)
Yeah. And look, that's again, completely unsurprising at the end of the day, is a business trying to extract as much money as it can out of people, except this time it's, it feels just incredibly predatory. But what are some of those tactics that you just alluded to that the platforms kind of, whether they use it to target new users, build a relationship with current users, or even just, you know, maintain that user engagement. You said a couple of things there about offering different sorts of bets or maybe special access or something, like what are some of the examples that they do?
Mark Kempster (08:46)
They offer tickets to football matches, offer you tickets to the grand finals, to the Australian open, to the state of origin, to the spring carnival in marquees. They have specific VIP customer relations people who pretend to be your friends basically, who will call you and they will chat to you and ask you, hey, what are you going to bet on today? Yeah, I like that type of bet too. And they ask you how your family's going and they ask you like how your dog's going, things along these lines.
They wanna pretend to be your friend and this really insidious behaviour of trying to build a relationship with someone, when all these VIP customer relations people all work on commission as well. So they're like, how you can have someone there trying to get you to bet more, not really care about how much you are betting because they're going to make more money off you if you do bet more. That type of relationship is so toxic.
But we've built an industry in Australia where it's allowed because we don't have enough regulation place to stop it. I had one person in particular I worked with who was offered 50% of his losses back if he kept betting with them every Saturday. So, because they want him to bet more and more and more, but they would offer him, yeah, as long as you bet so much on a Saturday, we'll give half of it back to you in bonus bets and you can bet the next day with that as well. Like just things like that to keep you in their circle, keep them make you feel like you're such a special person when the whole goal is to try and siphon as much money out of your pocket as possible.
Gareth King (10:11)
Yeah, even, even the way you've explained it there as a bonus bet, like, you know, psychologically, I can imagine it's like, yeah, yeah. I'm potentially only losing half as much. It's okay. It's only half as bad. And then like you said, it's not even real money. Like you'll just lose it again the next day. So, it's just like, you know, psychologically, it makes so much sense for them to offer it like that rather than just kind of a cash back, but it's just seems again, you're there the next day and you might be like, again, I don't know what what kind of amounts that this stuff represents.
But let's say you've got now 500 bucks left the next day. You're like, well, I didn't lose that 500 yesterday. You'll potentially lose that and more the next day. And you mentioned something a couple of minutes ago as well around the target, I guess the target audience or group priority being those 18-34 year olds. When I've been looking into this as well, looking at some of the findings, it's actually quite shocking to me, the stats, especially around that 18-34 year old age group. It was in the ANU report. think it was. I found it says that while, you know, for regular online gambling, 68% of users are considered at risk, but in that age group that you mentioned 18-34, that jumps to 82%. Now I'm assuming that that's because you said that the brain is, is, is not as developed to that kind of impulse control stuff. But we're into like AA plus territory if this was a school report marking as to how dangerous this is for 18-34 year olds. You mentioned, you know, the regulations just kind of can't or won't do anything about it. Like how is this happening for so long?
Mark Kempster (11:55)
I've got a lot of thoughts on that, but I probably can't say a lot of that because I don't want to start swearing on your podcast, Garethy. But the amount of lax regulation that is in place in this country is due to a few things. We have a government that's beholden to the industry and it's being proven now really that they don't want to do anything about it because it's an easy tax revenue for them to bring in.
Unfortunately, we have the Labor Party in Australia at federal levels who are the only Western civilised democracy party who own pokie machines and make revenue money off them. So, like we have a really strong sporting industry in Australia that have a lot of power with the AFL and the NRL who wield their power behind the scenes on an incredibly large basis.
The amount of times that I've tried to speak with people in Canberra and can't get meetings with people to try and talk about regulations and the damage it's doing to people because the AFL and the NRL are having meetings with people and they're trying to push their agendas at their end because they don't want to lose the gambling advertising revenue.
There are so many offshoots of the reason why. And we have quasi-national regulator in the Northern Territory who all our gambling companies in Australia, well, 95% of them are regulated and licensed out of the Northern Territory because of the tax offsets they get up there and we have an industry up there which acts with no regulation at all.
The Four Corners report that was out two weeks ago that Steve Canane did on the ABC, which is fantastic, really showed that up that they have the national Northern Territory Racing Commission don't even have any full-time staff and they're supposed to be the national regulator of a $50 billion industry in Australia. And we wonder why the amount of companies keep popping up and doing whatever they want to do at the moment because they know they can go and move their bases up there and act like cowboys pretty much with no type of punishments. They get absolute lettuce leaf punishments, slap on the wrist type of stuff when they do something wrong. So there's five things for you. There's probably a lot more of it as well, but like it's, there's so many offshoots of it that we have problems with in this country.
Gareth King (13:56)
That is crazy. I didn't know that about the Northern Territory. And to hear that, as you said, it's a $50 billion industry with no full-time staff in the regulation body. I'm kind of chuckling about it now, but it’s obviously not a laughing…
Mark Kempster (14:09)
Yeah, well the UK have 500 full-time staff for their downwind industry and we have none.
Gareth King (14:16)
What's the size of the UK gambling industry compared to ours?
Mark Kempster (14:19)
On a actual monetary sense, it's bigger, but we are by not even close per capita, the biggest gambling industry and the biggest losses for any country in the world per capita, when no one even comes close to the amount of money we lose in Australia on gambling. So, to have a national regulator that can't even have full-time staff that's based in the back office in the Northern Territory, it just beggars belief.
Gareth King (14:43)
And so is that national regulator an arm of the government? Or is it an independent thing? How does that relationship work?
Mark Kempster (14:50)
It's an arm of the Northern Territory government. So, they are in charge of it. They've never been officially given the title of a national regulator, but given the amount of gambling companies that are based in the Northern Territory, like I said, basically about 95% of all the companies in Australia are based, have put their operations there because of the tax offsets they get. They are pretty much the national regulator at the moment in that sense for a whole industry.
We don't have a national regulator. The federal government's never put anything in place to have a national regulator in place. It's one of the key recommendations of Peta Murphy's report that unfortunately is still sitting on the governance desk at the moment. And outside of the ban of gambling advertising she wanted to introduce, that was the second main point of it, that we can't have an industry that's worth $50 billion, that doesn't have any independent oversight to it.
Gareth King (15:37)
That just seems insane to me. That's the first time I'd heard that stat and, and, you know, I'm not even in that world and that just seems crazy. What, do you think the stalling and the delay is all about? I mean, obviously you said there's invested interests, but I mean, I can just imagine that an industry that size, the lobby is just so powerful. And as you said, if they're the ones getting the access, then what hope do normal people having problems with this have? But has there been any positive movement with regulation as more and more information and statistics and data comes out about the damage that these gambling apps are doing?
Mark Kempster (16:15)
Not really in the last few years. The main two things that the federal government introduced is BetStop, which has been okay. So BetStop is a national self-exclusion register, which we didn't have up until two years ago. So, you're actually allowed to, you can put your name in on that. It's supposed to block companies from contacting you and letting you sign up to any type of gambling company in Australia.
Unfortunately, there's still plenty of cases where companies are getting around the BetStop laws, there was just one this week, which David Pocock brought up and sent an estimates around a company in Queensland who they sent a letter out to all their self-excluded customers and said, we know you're self-excluded. We just want to let you know that we're here. If you ever want to do punt again, you can come back with a new account to us. So, they're not actually offering gambling services.
How hard that is for someone like myself to get an email like that, even if you are self-excluded, it makes you question what you're doing. It possibly makes you go and bet again because you've got so many doubts in your head. I've got so many people that I've helped over the last six years who have fallen back into their addictions because of the contact they get from companies when they shouldn't have. It is ridiculous.
There are so many instances of these types of cases that the national, the quasi-national regulator in the Northern Territory have dealt with where they get $10,000, $12,000 fines, when I know for a fact some people have taken their lives because of the contact they've had and they feel like they're never going to be able to get away from it. They've done all the right things that they can't put themselves on anymore self-exclusion registers, and they're still getting phone calls every week or they're getting emails every second week telling them to bet again. It is so bad.
Gareth King (17:56)
Yeah. How do they get around? Like we know that companies can buy email lists and databases. Is it simply a case of that or is it they don't care? As you said, the slap on the wrist is just so minuscule compared to what's potentially theirs?
Mark Kempster (18:11)
Yeah, I think that's the case. Even I still get them to this day. I got one 20 minutes before I come on the chat with you here Gareth, I got an email from a company offering me horse tipping services for the spring carnival. I think one, because I had a history of gambling heavily and I had a history of going to all these different gambling websites in Australia, your email gets out there as we know it, how the other internet works, the email list gets sold off to different companies.
And there's also a lot of people in the gambling industry who don't really care about the penalties that there is. So they will go from one company to another, take the books with them from one company, start up a new company. And then they know they'll only get a slap on the wrist if they do it the first time, they know they'll get a slap on the wrist if they do it the second time. So, they're not really scared about doing this to people. the money they make off people is like I said, they can get a $10,000 fine, but they can make that money back in half an hour off someone, of one person, let alone the 500 other people they've sent it to. So there's nothing in place to stop them really doing it at the moment.
Gareth King (19:10)
So that, just so I'm clear, that $10,000 fine is once, not times 500?
Mark Kempster (19:16)
No, just once. Yeah. like there was a case with Sportsbet last year. This is a bigger, on the bigger terms of things. They emailed 746 people, I think it was on Spring Carnival week and they blamed human error of it, which I doubt that they went to all their, a lot of their self-executed customers, a lot of those people complained and they got fined 50-odd thousand dollars. Like the amount of money they would have probably made off those emails going out would have been 10 times that amount in that week. So the fines that are there, they don't put anyone off. So they know they make the money back.
Gareth King (19:54)
Yeah, just that, that we've just touched on there is almost another side that the internet and tech is enabling, which is the selling off of those mailing lists and databases, you know, rather than just these addictive apps and contact to people who are meant to be on self-exclusion.
It seems like with enough money and access, you could mine almost anything about anybody and then use that to target them, you know, for this exact sort of stuff. But beyond mailing lists that they shouldn't be using, what are some of the other ways that these companies use through data to go after people now, whether they've got a history of gambling or do they go after people that don't, but they realise they might be susceptible to it?
Mark Kempster (20:38)
I think they target anyone who's got some type of inkling that they might like sport, they might like a popular culture event that's going to have a market up. So, I know when I've, and like I've spent days trying to go through my Instagram or Snapchat or whatever I'm on, and trying to change my ad preferences to stop getting gambling ads, which I've given up on now. I just have to just put up with it now, which is horrible, but I can't get away from it.
I know there's like, when I tried to block one of the gambling ads, I went right through the whole process, the ad preferences. And it was because they said you were getting this ad because you looked up football, you looked up men's clothing and you looked up music. So, it wasn't even to do, and I love my music. I think I'm quite a fashionable person. I like to dress up. I’m looking at things like that all the time.
So like it's, to have those, that type of thing in place for the mining data, just for that, because you might have the off chance that Oh, there's a football game this weekend. We're to send it out to everyone who watched the football video last week. Doesn't matter if you like it or not. Or Australian Idol, that's an old reference, Australian Idol’s got a final on this weekend, but these people watch the videos for that. So we'll send them off the idea that there be a betting market on this this weekend you can bet on, and try and get you that way. So they're not just targeting people who like horse racing or poker machines. They're targeting anyone of that demographic who might have an inkling they might want to bet on something.
Gareth King (21:59)
And that is also one of the, I guess, the polar opposites of this issue. Like I think everybody immediately can associate betting with sport now it's just kind of hand in hand. put on any sport on TV or even you go to the event, like everything is just bet, bet, bet. I've used these apps a couple of times. I've put on a few bets in my life. I'm hopeless. I never win, but you know, I'm lucky enough that I kind of just give myself that little bit of money and go, okay, if I win, cool. If I don't.
You know, my thing is I play Powerball, you know, every now and again, just because I dream. But that, that doesn't really send me anything. I play and they're like, Hey, tonight's jackpot might be, I don't know, 50 million. And I'll be like, okay, whatever. And I think you're playing that and you know, you're not going to win. Someone obviously wins, but you're not going to.
But with the sports betting and, you know, putting on multis and things like that, I've known people who've had an issue with gambling through online gambling in the past and, phones. I can see from speaking to them that there is almost a little bit of skill when they talk about it. And that feels like you're this really smart person that actually knows stuff. So, it's not pure luck, there's actually some skill there, and I could see that winning something like that could I guess, verify and confirm that you are a bit more intelligent.
But recently it feels like no matter who you speak to, whether it's them directly or they'll know of someone who knows someone that's had a problem with these platforms. How are we going with trying to get a handle on this stuff? Or do you think that it's kind of almost a bit of an unstoppable train at this point that is just steamrolling over everything due to influence, and I guess money itself?
Mark Kempster (23:45)
We're going okay. We are getting somewhere. I think the noise that the Alliance, where I work is making, people like David Pocock and Kate Cheney and Monique Ryan in Parliament are making a lot of noise about it, especially David Pocock has been utterly fantastic in the last 12, 18 months on it all. We have some really good journalists in Australia who are reporting on it quite regularly, some really good people at The Guardian and Crikey, Danny at Crikey, Josh and Henry the Guardian who do a lot of work on it.
So what we are, there is a groundswell of it. We know there is, we do a lot of surveying at the Alliance that shows like the more than three quarters of Australia want gambling ads banned. It's like nobody likes them. Nobody wants to see them when they're watching sport. Nobody wants to explain to their kid what a multi is when they're six or seven years old, just because you're watching footy with your dad on the couch on a Saturday.
Like we're the first generation of Australians to have to explain our kids what gambling is and what a multi is, and why it's a good thing or why it's a bad thing. Nothing's going to happen until we get some actual action on the Peta Murphy's inquiry and the report she put down. That is the absolute catalyst for change, and the government know that that is and they're trying to delay as much as possible because of the best interest we've talked about. I think we'll get somewhere. It's just extremely slow going, but there's too much groundswell of support to have it, especially advertising removed.
When I talk about this stuff, I don't ever want to come across like I'm being a prohibitionist either. There is a place for gambling in Australia. I don't want to ban gambling and it's not about banning gambling for people who enjoy it. And there's a lot of people who go to the pub on a Saturday with their mates or sit on the couch at home and can enjoy it safely basically. So, it's not about that. It's about making it safer. And at the moment, it's the same as the cigarettes where in 70s and 80s, it's advertised to a point where it's not safe and we need to actually do something about it before we get to a point where we lose a whole generation of people to gambling.
Gareth King (25:40)
Totally agree. I think that outright prohibition probably isn't the right way to go about it. But I think for me, the issue is just the pervasiveness of it. And I'm sure you can download every single app onto your phone, and have all of those things reaching out to you. Hey, do you want to put a bet on here, a bet on here? You know, I was reading something recently about the number of teenagers, not even 18 years old, gambling on the way to school, which seems like, oh, here it is at the stat, 30 % of 12-17 year olds have gambled.
Mark Kempster (26:11)
There's more people under 18 in Australia betting than there is actually playing basketball at that age in Australia, or playing soccer at that age in Australia. So, we're bringing up a generation of gambling addicts at the moment. It is horrible. I see it. I help out at Auskick with my son sometimes when he goes down there, and there's kids down there, seven or eight years old, we're talking about, oh, Collingwood or $1.80 favourites on the weekend to their dads, not knowing.
The gambling companies have done so well with their advertising that this is the way they see sport now. They go onto the app and they see the odds are right there before they see the score. Like they can't get away from it ,and this is the why it is so dangerous and why the internet has played such a big role in this because our younger generations live on the internet now, and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or not, they see it so much. We have never been at point in this country where it's been so pervasive in our faces as it is.
Gareth King (27:05)
That's just shocking, just hearing you say that. You've got kids like under 10 talking about the odds of a win for a team. I know when I was that age, I knew of gambling as this kind of abstract concept, but it's like, I didn't know what odds were. I knew you went to a casino and you can win money. That's the extent of it, but I'm sure that that's kind of a normal amount of information.
But yeah, as you said, kids that young through access to the internet and technology and whether it's their own devices or, know, on their parents, just kind of seeing yes, betting is what you do in any sporting event as so normal. It just feels like we're really, really going to have a huge, even bigger problem coming down the pipeline.
But you know, that's that you said as well about more, more of these teens. Again, I'm laughing at just, I'm just in awe of how awful it is. More of these teens are gambling.
God, look, one of the other things that you've, you've kind of got me thinking about now was in-play betting. That to me, it just seems so crazy that you are even more caught up in the moment that you could just be smashing buttons because you're so emotionally invested. You know, like your team might be losing, you're desperate for a goal, perhaps for your team to win, but now you, you're financially invested in that goal. Why would you say that in-play betting itself has become so massive? And what are the outcomes that are happening because of it?
Mark Kempster (28:36)
I think you're right in what you're saying that it's the emotional state you’re in when you're watching something and you have an investment in it. So, I think it's become so popular because you can get it on so quickly. You can kind of watch the trends of a game. I had a lot of issues with that when I was gambling, I probably thought I knew sport better than what other people did and I thought I had an advantage in that way. I didn't, like it was never the case, but the way my brain worked at the time with the dopamine effect that my brain was chasing and that it just turned me into a zombie with a mush for a brain really when I was gambling.
So the way it's set up, you can just get a bet on within 20 seconds and you don't even know what you're doing half the time because of what you're watching and you think you're smarter than someone else. So it plays on the urge mechanism in your body. When you have an urge to do something, and I've learnt this from my recovery now and the way I used to bet, it takes a good 10 minutes for an urge to go away.
So, to have in-play access to betting and have people allow who can have it in their pocket, you can bet on it to win, you bet on something to lose, you can bet on the goals, you can bet on the tackle, you bet on whatever it is in-play. When you have the urge to do that, unless you can have trained your brain properly to not give into that urge, you can lose money so quickly and that's why it's so dangerous.
You can put on 10 bets in that no matter time, lose a thousand dollars or something and all before you even, your brain has really kind of even registered what you are doing in that state. But when you are betting and you're in an emotional state or you're with your mates and they're all doing it, or you're drinking alcohol or you're on something else at the time, and you've got an urge to go and do something, then you're not going to be able to control that at all and the gambling companies really play on that.
That's why in-play betting has become so popular, especially for the way you can also bet on things to lose, like with horse racing, you can bet on something to lose halfway around the track. You don't have to even bet before the race starts. So it's crazy the amount of things you can bet on in-play now.
Gareth King (30:26)
Yeah. And it seems to me that that is something that can really only be facilitated if you've got the access to doing it right in the palm of your hand at any time. So, you don't have to travel and go and find the bookie or I don't know, go to the TAB or any of that to do it. Like it really does rely on that technology being on your person all the time.
But I think one of the other things that I'm trying to understand, like the real picture around is how much of this normalisation of gambling, being a part of every event. Like if you, if you can bet on everything, then you can bet on nothing. You know what I mean? It's just kind of become part of the experience. Do you think that that normalisation is just straight up making it harder for us as, an Australian society? And I'm sure, you know, the same issues that happen happening in other countries. Is it just harder for us to acknowledge the extent of the problem because it is so normalised?
Mark Kempster (31:19)
I think it's become so normalised. We have grown up in Australia with a love of betting. I think it's been in our nature, it's been in our culture for a very, very long time to bet. And up until the mid 2000s, it was safer to do that. It was probably harder to get a bet on. It was destination betting for lot of people. You had to physically go somewhere to bet and that's what it is around the world. You see a lot of countries around the world, especially America up until recently, places in Europe where you don't have access to somewhere to gamble unless it's actually at a casino. So, I think we've been brought up in cultures like that in Australia, and that's what's kind of exasperated when it did blow up with the internet and gambling apps. It took us to this other place where it was just so easy to do.
Gareth King (32:08)
It's just so crazy to me that the worst thing a player can do is bet on the matches, but you can have platforms funding the leagues behind the matches, you know, the venues, and maybe it's potentially teams as well. Like it seems like just the conflict of interest is just so blatant. It just seems a little bit too on the nose that you couldn't make it up, but we don't have to because it's just like that. Is this exclusively an Australian thing?
Mark Kempster (32:36)
Yeah, they've done really well to intrinsically link it. The big sporting codes in Australia make so much money off gambling. So they're never ever going to want to stop what's in place now. And then this is going to be the really hard thing to try and make any change with it is that the fact that they make like, I think $230 million a year, across all the companies in Australia, sporting codes in Australia make off gambling revenue. It's going to be something that's very hard to replace.
And it's the other factors as well. What they argue is they're going to lose all their advertising revenue they make off it as well. So, they can't sell their rights for as much because gambling companies won't want to advertise if we take the laws away from them. So why the sporting codes and the lobbies have so much power because there is so much money behind it. And they use scare tactics around like, we're going to have to take away community football, we won’t be able to fund it if we can't have gambling advertising, and it was the same scare tactic that the cigarette industry used in the 70s and 80s that the sky was going to fall in when we knew it never did.
Gareth King (33:40)
Yeah, look, the cigarette one is so interesting. I can remember seeing, you know, like there's photos of cricketers, know, like Shane Warne having a ciggy, what's that golf guy, John Daly having a ciggy, and it's like everybody smoked and cigarette advertising everywhere. Now it's like we're in the year 2025 - there's probably not a human alive that doesn't know how bad cigarettes are, but you know, if you, if you're really into the darts, like you're just going to keep smoking darts. And I'm sure it's the same with, with all of this stuff.
One thing I did want to want to speak to you about was with these apps being in your pocket. The other thing that's always in your pocket is obviously access to your bank. Now, once upon a time, you would have to go to the ATM, get cash out. You could have your daily limit, put it into the pokies or onto the casino table, whatever it is. But now you've got banking apps that you can transfer thousands of dollars every day and I'm sure you can change that to make it less, but they're in the same place as the betting app. So if you lose, you can get more straight away. Like again, this is just another facilitation of technology that allows this to be so much worse. What role do you think that banking and even payment systems have to play in this, and do they play a role?
Mark Kempster (34:56)
They play a role. Again, when I've gone through my recovery now and kind of learnt why I probably fell into my gambling as much as I did is because of the ease of access I had two money as well at the time with banking apps on my phone. And when I started to recover, had to give, part of my recovery plan was to give my access to my bank accounts over to my partner who looks after my money to this day because I was addicted to gambling. I was addicted to having the money and using the money as well. I suppose in thinking it was my money, I could do whatever I want with it.
And that became really, again, intrinsically linked between the two of them. If I had extra money and I had access to the money, then I would gamble it as no different to someone who is addicted to alcohol. If they had wine in the fridge or beer in the fridge, it didn't matter how many other great mechanisms you put in place around it. If it was there and you access to it, you're probably going to drink it.
And that's just the way an addict’s brain works. So there is a huge correlation between it. I bet a lot on credit cards as well. And that is what I didn't mention before is they have banned, well, they are in the process of banning credit card usage on gambling apps, but that wasn't the case up until 12 months ago. You could gamble on your credit card as much as you wanted to. And that was something that I struggled with, like I would pay a credit card off and then use that credit card to get to gamble again with basically. So I was just in a cycle of it. Then I would get another credit card or something along those lines. We ended up with a couple of credit cards just solely that I used to gamble with and never told anyone about it.
And having to lie about that type of stuff and lying about your money and where your money in your bank was, just made your mental health 10 times worse as well when you're trying to deal with something like an addiction.
Yeah, there's so many offshoots of that you could talk about with it. And again, the way it's how easy it is to link your bank account to your debit card, to your savings account, depositing in there straight away. And, like they don't, they never ask you about your deposits. They always ask you about your withdrawals, how much you want to take out and whether you want to do this and you can still, and you can cancel withdrawal. You can't cancel a deposit. Once it's in there, they go, no, you deposited it. You need to bet it now before you it out.
Like at many times I'd win money on a Saturday and maybe win fairly well on a Saturday and then withdraw it, and they would leave the withdrawal there for a day or two days before they process it or even on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, leave it there and give you an option to cancel your withdrawal. But they would never do that with money deposited into your account. So, the stream of money you have going into an app just because it's linked to your bank account is again, it's had a huge effect on the way people gamble.
Gareth King (37:30)
That again makes total sense that they'd like to take your money, but they don't want to give it back in any form. But you said something about kind of hiding what was going on. And I guess that leads me to another thought that the internet and technology enables in that sense is you don't need to interact socially with anybody to be doing these things. So, like it's a lot easier for people to potentially hide their problem or their shame through the hiding that can be done in an online space. But does that play a part in people not seeking help if they really should?
Mark Kempster (38:03)
Oh, for sure. Like I, I felt ashamed for 10 years. I felt like I was just a shit person. I just felt lost and alone because you were, you can sit in your bedroom and you can lose. I can sit on the, I was sitting on the couch next to my partner betting. She didn't know what I was doing. And I was sitting there losing her money and having, and then trying to hide that the whole time and trying to lie about it. And, just, yeah, it almost ruined me.
And I said to the point where I was just an utterly broken person by the end of it. And then I go online and just getting stupid arguments to tell people they're idiots online about things I never knew about because I just wanted to make people feel as bad as I was feeling in myself. And it's not like any other addiction where you can physically see a change in someone like with alcohol and with any type of drug, we see that physical change in someone. It's so easy to hide it inside of you with a gambling addiction. And I think there's still that stigma around it that people don't really see it sometimes as an addiction like a drug or alcohol one, when it works exactly the same way and it ruins your life in exactly the same way.
Gareth King (39:10)
No, that's, that's a great point there. And I think that that comes back to what I can imagine is just the normalisation of it. And I, I just can't understand how we're all so blasé about it. We know it's an online industry and we know that the, the online space is completely borderless. Like is it even possible for Australia to regulate the online gambling space with say, betters and gamblers having access to the world? How does that work?
Mark Kempster (39:37)
I think having something's better than having nothing. I think that's the point with it all. At the moment, we don't have anything to help regulate it at all. So I think a national regulator would at least, an independent national regulator would at least make the companies more accountable for what they're doing to people and the way they are targeting people and things along these lines and actually have penalties in place that meant something to actually stop these companies or at have them thinking twice about the way they're operating. So I think it'll work in that sense.
It's never going to be a perfect world. We're never going to have a perfect system for it. There's always going to be companies popping up and we've seen the way the internet's evolved in the last 20 years. In 20 years time, who knows what shape that's going to take in terms of gambling online. But yeah, there's never going to be an absolute nirvana with it all either. So, we just need to take it more seriously. It's got to be taken more seriously. We've got to better things in place than we’re doing now. And yeah, we just can't continue to have it in children and young adults and young men and young women's faces as much as we do now and not do anything about it.
Gareth King (40:39)
With all of that in mind, we look at the entire current digitised gambling and betting landscape that we've been talking about. One of the things that there's obviously a little bit of an effort being made with those kind of warnings that they whack on at the end of the adverts and things like that. Obviously, they're pushing this concept of responsible gambling. Are they a genuine effort, or is it just doing enough to get the what regulators there is off of their case?
Mark Kempster (41:05)
I think they're insanely stupid. They don't work. They've been proven not to work. They're a slap in the face. Anybody who's got a problem with gambling knows that they should be betting responsibly. There's no point putting those things on at the end of an ad. People who don't have a problem see those catchphrases at the end and think they're insanely stupid as well. I don't have a problem. Why do I need to be responsible?
They don't work. They've been told to put them in place by the federal government because they want to be seen to be doing something when it's like, I can't tell you how angry it makes me just see them people, see they're saying, bet responsibly when they just had a whole ad that's been on 30 seconds beforehand about how not to bet responsibly.
And at the end of it, and you're trying to make someone feel bad about it just at the end of it, it makes no sense whatsoever. Just if we, if we have to have something at the end of an ad telling you to bet responsibly, it's because the gambling company, the betting, they're just showing you you're irresponsible in the way they're showing it, especially with things like multis and these lines.
I know we mentioned multis before, like multis are advertised by gambling companies because they make so much profit on it because nearly everyone who puts a multi on will lose their multis. Like multis are the hardest things to hit in the world. And that's the exact reason they advertise them so much because they make so much money off it. So why we allowed to advertise it if it's not responsible to do so? Will we allow cigarette advertising on TV if you just put a smoke responsibility bit on the end of it?
We know the damage it does, we know the damage gambling does, but for this instance, we let it on TV and cigarette advertising, we took it off because we knew the damage to it. So it doesn't make any sense at all.
Gareth King (42:40)
No, do you think it's a case that we're still kind of in the denial stage, or all of that's well known and established now and we're just dragging our feet a little bit?
Mark Kempster (42:49)
I think everybody knows the damage it's doing. I genuinely think it's what happens behind the scenes in Canberra that we don't see, which is why we haven't got to a point where everything's been done. As I mentioned again earlier, the amount of surveys that we've done at the Alliance that show that three quarters of Australia don't want, they want regulation in place, and they want a safer industry and they want the ads banned.
We're not in denial about it. We know it's an issue. We see it's an issue every day, but we have a tiny percentage of Australians who lobby for it and they're the ones being listened to, not everybody else, people like myself who have to fight every day to try and get a 10 minute meeting with anyone who wants to listen to us. But just because we don't have the money to pay for the access, we don't get to tell our stories. And yeah, like it's just this small insular group in Canberra which is stopping everything happening in Australia at the moment.
Gareth King (43:40)
Yeah. And I think that that's, that's just the most tragic aspect of it. You know, when you boil it down there, it's cash for access, but I don't think you could really call it that with any kind of legal. Yeah. Okay. We'll call it that. Cash for access. But just, just on that then, like what, what kind of regulations do you hope can get through, or what do you think would really help to address this situation and kind of help us turn a corner a little bit?
Mark Kempster (43:49)
The advertising has to go. That is the absolute number one. It's been any type of inquiry that's been done. And I keep mentioning the Murphy inquiry. And for anyone who hasn't read that, it is worth going to read. Read the stories about the people who have been harmed by this industry and then read the recommendations that Peta put out. And Peta did so much work. She worked on this report up until she was on her deathbed. She passed away from cancer a few weeks after this report came down.
She knew that how damaging in this industry was, so she worked so hard on this report and it had bipartisan support across the parliament as well. Like it wasn't just Labor people, what Peta was, it was Liberals and Greens and Nationals and Independents were all on this inquiry. So, a bad of gambling advertising staggered across three years, so it doesn't affect everyone at once, is the absolute number one goal and it would have helped people. I can't tell you the amount of people that come to me and I get dozens of people a week, giving me up on socials telling me, I've got an issue, Mark, I don't know what to do. Can you help me? I feel trapped. I can't walk the dog without seeing ads on billboards. I can't watch the news with my family. I can't read the newspaper on the weekend and do the crossword without seeing a gambling ad.
We need to remove that from society and that would make a huge difference. The national regulator would make a huge difference as well. And pulling back the amount of inducements and the amount of things along those lines that the companies can offer people to continue to bet. We wouldn't allow people to walk down the street and offer drugs to people as a bonus because they're a good customer. They wouldn’t allow cigarette companies to go and offer cigarettes near school grounds to people because their parents were betting within their account as well, things on those lines, like, sorry, smoking with a smoking account or something like that.
So having something in place that continually allows people to bet longer, like that inducements do, they need to be removed as well. So they're the three main things and they're all in the Murphy report and sitting on the government's desk at the moment. But we are more than two years now since that's been put down. I know because I gave evidence in the inquiries and I know how long it's been. I think it's quite a few easy things you can put in place without, and it wouldn't kill the industry either. So it would still be there for people to go and enjoy it safely if those things were put in place.
Gareth King (46:13)
Yeah, right. So beyond a bit more movement on the Murphy report, what else gives you hope that some real positive change will be or can be made into the future around this issue?
Mark Kempster (46:24)
I think it's becoming, there's more people like me wanting to talk about it and making normalising talking about gambling addictions in society. I think it's becoming a bit easier to do. It was really hard a few years ago when it was nobody really wanted to talk about it. I couldn't get on anywhere to talk about it, but like the last 12 to 18 months has been a groundswell of support. So, I think if you have an issue, if you have an issue with the way it is, I think more people are actually going to their MPs, local MPs and talking about it there. People are removing gambling from local sporting clubs and trying to move away from those types of things where you have punters clubs or you have pokies venues, responsible local football clubs, little things like that are really starting to happen more.
And we see that the Alliance, we work a lot with local communities around how they can move away from gambling in their communities and have different avenues to make money without having to rely on gambling revenues. So there's lots of little things like that. And I think the more and more that happens, the groundswell’s going to become bigger and bigger, hopefully, where governments can't ignore it anymore the way they are and they'll hopefully have to do something about it.
So it's little incremental gains we do see across the board, but unfortunately, it probably will still take a while. And I hope it just doesn't really, like I said, ruin a generation of people because we have to go a long way around without actually having a nice straight highway to go down with it all.
Gareth King (47:49)
No, absolutely. And you just touched on something there I'd love for us to finish on, which is obviously the positive work that you're doing at the Alliance. So, can you just tell us a little bit about some of the things that the Alliance is doing in case anybody hears this and they might be looking for a little bit of assistance?
Mark Kempster (48:05)
Yeah. So check it out. The Alliance for Gambling Reform, you type that into Google. It's the first thing that comes up. Our website, we do a lot of work trying to lobby. We do a lot of work in terms of trying to speak to people and getting them to understand the damages that this industry does to people. We have people like Tim Costello, who's a national treasure, who's our chief advocate, who the way he speaks about it is really good to listen to. We have plenty of interviews on there with him, that we have petitions that are going on the website in terms of if you are feeling strongly about the gambling side of things that I am. We have petitions you can sign, which we will present to Parliament.
We have about 37,000 signatures on there at the moment to show there is this huge groundswell of support to remove it. If you are having issues with your gambling, we have links there, which you can read about the ways some people got past their gambling. We have a Voices of Lived Experience program, which I'm a part of where we have people who want to advocate for change like I do, who have gone through gambling addictions, you can come and join some of our sessions around that if you'd like.
And the people like myself and plenty of other people who have been through addiction and we work together and what we can do to advocate for change. And there's lots of other articles and things along there to try and open up chats with your own family and your own friendship groups about gambling. Especially if you're worried about young people in your family and they are gambling, there's plenty of stats and statistics on there to show them the damage that you can do it yourself and the damage this industry does, so they can kind of have at least a better idea of what's going on and why they should probably think again about gambling at a young age as well. There’s probably some other things that I’m forgetting as well, but there’s heaps on there.
Gareth King (49:40)
That's really good. No, look, thanks so much for your time today, Mark. Obviously sharing your experience and your knowledge around what is a very serious issue, completely exacerbated by the internet and technology. What have you got coming up and where can people more importantly follow what you’re up to?
Mark Kempster (49:59)
So Mark Kempster, you just type my name into any of your social media platforms, I'm on there and I always leave my channels open. So, if you want to reach out and have a chat to me about if you are struggling with a gambling addiction or you've got someone in your life struggling, feel free to reach out and I'll try and help out. I'll send you in the right directions.
And I've got a few other possible projects coming out in the next few weeks on radio and TV. So you probably, yeah, if you type my name into Google as well, you'll see that. I can't 100 % talk about that at the moment but there's some things coming up in the next few weeks as well. But yeah, look, I will try and do as much advocacy work as I possibly can and try and keep this issue at the forefront of people's minds, especially our federal government at the moment.
Gareth King (50:40)
Awesome, Mark. Thank you again so much.
Mark Kempster (50:42)
Any time Gareth, appreciate it.
Has the internet ruined the Human Identity?
