Andrew Demetriou’s AFL has been on a double-barreled mission to recruit more female fans and make gargantuan amounts of coin since he took over as commissioner in 2003.
The marginalisation of women as fans cut out half the potential audience and with the benefit of modern day enlightenment, is remarkable to have occurred in the first place.
Women are more welcome, have been encouraged to learn about the game and have had their tastes catered for via a concerted push by the AFL to discourage boorish male behaviour at games. As well, the rules have been tightened to place less emphasis on player physicality and instead on their skills and athleticism.
Betting, on the other hand, goes with sport as readily as steroids. It’s a corrosive element that is surely revisionist. Unlike the positive influence of encouraging the development of a female fan-base, betting introduces a negative, corrupting threat. Large chunks of cash can be made, quickly, by corrupting a player to accept bribes to modify playing behaviour or, worse, by threatening the player with harm should they not co-operate.
Much has been made of the match fixing scandals to befall cricket. The most recent being the revelation that the entire Pakistan cricket team frequently collude to orchestrate results. What is not discussed – at all – is the massive sponsorship dosh provided to cricket by commercial betting agencies. The same betting agencies that are now sponsoring AFL. Commentators are being paid to mention betting during on-air coverage – odds are routinely discussed as if being part of impromptu match analysis.
There’s nothing wrong in having a bet, but sensible administration needs to think straight-headed about the implications of introducing the aggressive marketing strategies being employed by these agencies and the effect it’s having on sport. The influx of commercial betting is normalising betting as being somehow twinned with the sport it sponsors, when in fact, betting has as much in common with AFL football as a badger does with the carbon pollution reduction scheme.
