Australian sports wagering to increase

A report by Deloitte on behalf of online bookmaker Sportsbet revealed that sports betting turnover has increased significantly each year. This was largely attributed to the growth in online wagering, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

According to the company’s research, annual betting on the AFL has hit us$ 933 million, with a further us$ 750 million bet on the rugby. Over the next five years, this is set to rise to us$ 1.8 billion and us$ 1.5 billion, respectively.

Total turnover on sports betting has grown more than 13% a year, driven by a 28% rise in online sports wagering, the research initiative discovered, noting that this is still significantly smaller than the overall us$ 20.7 billion in bets pulled in by racing.
Sportsbet CEO Cormac Barry commented that the Deloittes report illustrated how important the industry is in a financial sense to the sport and racing sectors. Barry warned that if the NRL did change its model, punters would turn away from Australian betting websites in favour of better deals on offshore operations that may not be as well regulated.

This increases the risk to the integrity of sport and is likely to result in reduced returns to sport from product fees over the long-term. Unregulated foreign sites do not pay product fees, while in the past five years, Sportsbet alone has paid more than us$ 51.8 million in product fees," the online gambling executive said.