This is not anti-gambling per se. It’s against the way gambling action is shoved down our throats and down our noses. It’s against the infantilization of sports fans. One of Quilty’s themes is masculinity. Betting ads are presented to a lame caricature of Australian masculinity who thinks we’re all fools (no correspondence is made!).
Even if you can sugarcoat the insidious effect of this brainwashing on enough sections of the population to make it a documented social threat, you cannot ignore the ruinous effect it is having on the convenience of watching sports. You can’t ignore the fact that it’s impossible to ignore. It enters you, not like a catchy tune, but like a carcinogen.
Steve Smith is getting his money’s worth this week.Recognition:Getty Images
If you complain, you’ll probably be told that you can always watch pay TV with no or fewer ads. It’s true. But it’s all in one piece. The deafening barrage of gambling ads, the foisting on children of commodities set to be obsolete next year, the segregation of sport behind paywalls: this piece is sport as a commodity.
At some point, Australia’s love of sport was confiscated from us and sold back to us as something we must buy to guarantee our place in sporting heaven. The Catholic Church and its medieval indulgences had nothing against the 21st century spirituality of sport. Sport has become crowdfunding for millionaires.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan this week,Recognition:AFL photos
Take a look around this week; It was all about the ledger, not the scorecard. Golfers Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman follow Greg Norman to the promised runway. Norman pretends to shake up pro golf, but Smith himself bluntly calls it a “business decision.” What he will learn is that sporting events, whose only reason for being is money, will soon be dead to watch, dead to play, and then die. There’s a long story to tell.
As negotiations for a new 10-figure AFL TV rights deal draw to a close, there’s still a chance more games could be pixelated for a fee. A “Super Saturday” is proposed. It’s bound to be awesome for someone who’s already super awesome.
Almost as if to make up for it, the AFL announces a funding boost for community footy, $17 million next year, then 10 percent of the AFL’s annual “taxable income,” whatever that is. AFL CEO Gillon McLachan called it “truly historic”.
At the sub-pro level, Footy bleeds to death. According to the AFL’s own figures in the same publication, $17 million equates to $35 per capita for all registered players. That’s about half a football.
At the same time, Cricket Australia is trying to avert a mass exodus from its modestly lucrative Big Bash League to fabulously wealthy leagues in South Africa and the Gulf. CA estimates an additional $30 million will be needed.
As reported by Daniel Brettig on these pages, funding options include smuggling more matches on pay-TV, dumping part or all of the BBL on Indian entrepreneurs and/or American venture capitalists, or raising fees for club and junior cricketers.
And maybe it’s still not enough. Steve Smith is waiting for a better BBL deal. Everyone would think he was a bit close to scratching. Meanwhile, a national jobs summit was convened and one of its agenda items was five years or more of stagnation in real wages for Australian workers and what to do about it.
The separation has rarely been so strong. Honestly, on the various Smiths, tell someone who cares.
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