Barni Evans laments being involved in an advertising ‘arms race’ and says company did not do enough to stop integrity threats to major sports
Australia’s largest online gambling company has conceded it failed to properly understand its responsibility to prevent financial crime and did not do enough to stop serious integrity threats to major sporting codes.
The Sportsbet chief executive, Barni Evans, told an industry conference in Sydney on Wednesday that the company “forgot to do some grownup things” and “stuffed a lot of things up”, including its involvement in an advertising “arms race”.
“I have come to truly appreciate that we have got a really important job to do to protect Australians from organised and financial crime,” Evans said, in a blunt address to gambling executives. “It didn’t dawn on me five years ago and does now. We take that very seriously.”
Evans said Sportsbet – whose customers gambled $2.7bn with it over three months last year – had initially done “a terrible job” of alerting sporting bodies to betting transactions that may have posed serious integrity threats.
“That took three or four years to catch on and a few incidents to alarm us, or shock us into [realising], actually, we have got a role to play here and we can help sports do a much better job.”
In May 2024, Australia’s financial intelligence agency accepted an enforceable undertaking from Sportsbet that it would improve its compliance with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.
Earlier this month, Guardian Australia revealed the AFL had admitted its integrity system for online gambling was seriously deficient. The AFL had struggled to identity whether players, coaches and staff are using inside information to manipulate betting markets, in breach of their contracts.
Evans also said the gambling industry and government agencies should “hang our heads in shame” about the time it took to introduce a national self-exclusion regime for people trying to break their gambling addictions.
“No single person is responsible for that … but our ecosystem failed,” he said. “We might have allowed ourselves a couple of years to get the thing going, as it is an important thing to get right. But surely, seven years, we should hang our heads at the amount of time.”
Legislation to create a national register was introduced in 2018 but wasn’t launched until August 2023.
Evans, who has a background in advertising, said he had sympathy for the bookmaker Tom Waterhouse, an early pioneer of sports betting advertising in Australia who faced public criticism for his ads in 2013.
“I feel for Tom,” Evans said. “He has been unfairly vilified because he was simply the person in front of the camera. I remember thinking at the time, ‘he has done nothing wrong’. The government has no rules to prevent him from doing this.
“It wasn’t his fault. The fault lies in the ecosystem. We collectively had not created the right framework to understand what the community accepted and what it did not, and he became the fall guy.”
In reference to Sportsbet’s advertising campaigns in recent years and an “arms race” between competitors, Evans said: “We stuffed a lot of things up.
“Many of you – publicly or privately, I’m sure – would be a little bit critical of me for not taking more unilateral action. But rightly or wrongly, that’s what we did and that’s where we are.”
Late last year, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, agreed government reforms on gambling advertising were “taking longer than hoped”, but said she was still working through consultation and policy processes.
In Australia, Gambling Help Online is available on 1800 858 858. The National Debt Helpline is at 1800 007 007. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found via the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare on 0808 8020 133. In the US, call the National Council on Problem Gambling at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM.