Key points:
- Sportsbet CEO Barni Evans discussed the last 14 years of online sports betting in Australia and the challenges the brand has faced
- In its early days, Evans admitted the brand “got a load wrong”
- The industry needs to come together to tackle regulatory consistency, the threat of the illegal offshore market and declines in racing in Australia
- The industry is facing challenges, but Evans stated "I’d rather be doing them in Australia than anywhere else in the world”
Barni Evans, CEO of Flutter-owned Sportsbet took to the stage on the morning of Regulating the Game Sydney 2025 day two, to discuss the history of Australia’s online sports betting ecosystem and that, despite a rocky history, he is confident it can be overcome.
“I think we, in Australia, in our industry, are actually in a pretty good place. We have quite a bit to be optimisitc about,” he began. “I know that in all of our day jobs, no matter what we do, we have gripes and groans. We never wake up on a Monday morning thinking: ‘Jeez, this job is easy!’” With perspective on the global market, regulation in Australia is not that bad, according to Evans. He does not need to bring security with him, for example.
“We recognise and have come to practice, over the past couple of years, an at times formal and at times informal, ecosystem of different disciplines, activities and interests.”
Everyone involved has their part to play in the ecosystem, and as such those in the industry must honour a set of commitments and responsibilities, he argued, be that in funding horseracing or protecting customers, both in an RG sense and in protection from financial crime. Yet, despite this, the objective of a bookmaker, first and foremost, is to entertain, he said.
Australia is in a good place, Evans argues, because the Australian gaming industry delivers on these responsibilities.
A trip down memory lane
Evans continued by looking back on the past, and how the online gaming market is still a relatively new one, shaped by legal rulings, technology and other global businesses. At the time, between 2011 – 2016, Sportsbet had some hits and misses. While sport, value and innovation for players, learnt through the methods of other global operators, were Evans’ picks for hits, on misses, “we got a load wrong.”
A combination of settling into Australia and competition among operators led Sportsbet to “forget to do a few grown-up things,” Evans stated. “We, I suspect rather petulantly, railed against the imposition of funding requirements from racing and sport, and challenged them in the courts. Inevitably we lost, and it took a couple of years for us to dust ourselves down and recognise that, actually, we have a role to play.”
Integrity, advertising and industry engagement were also areas where Sportsbet stumbled during this period, Evans said. In integrity, it was not aiding sports in managing its integrity (when Sportsbet itself was already managing its own). In advertising, Evans pointed to a picture from an advert featuring Tom Waterhouse in 2013, when he did live bets on camera in front of a pitch – an event that “unfairly vilified” Waterhouse and was a result of lacking regulation at the time. “The fault lies in the ecosystem,” he said. “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. It was a systemic failing.”
Finally, industry engagement failings came down to too much focus on competition and not enough on collaboration, not just between operators but also with governments and educational bodies.
Evans went over other time periods, including between 2016 – 2022, when the industry faced taxation change and the introduction of the National Consumer Protection Framework for Online Wagering in Australia (NCPF), alongside a trend in brands consolidation and the impact of Covid-19. In terms of misses in the period, an advertising arms race and illegal offshore operators were pointed to as two key problem areas, with advertising in particular having been a key driver for Sportstbets dominance in the market. “Rightly or wrongly, that’s what we did,” he said.
The present
The last phase, the most recent phase, consisted in post the unwind from Covid and a downturn in racing revenue. In a time of economic uncertainty, offshore operators have continued to cause issues – earlier in his presentation, Evans pointed out the “dangerous” mix of VPN’s and crypto on the market – while social licence on gaming also took its toll.
While celebrating industry collaboration, safer gambling and the NCPF, Evans highlighted three key areas that the industry has yet to crack: Regulatory consistency and collaboration, sustaining the racing industry and combatting the illegal market.
For the first, an NCPF 2.0 is “logical,” with a focus on consistent and proactive measures. In sustaining racing, its cultural value and job generation should be remembered. Finally, for offshore operators, Evans “guaranteed” that, in this weekend’s Grand Prix, “there will be no licensed Australian wagering brands around Albert Park.” This, alongside the wider issue, threatens to annihilate product fees, safer gambling, sports integrity and more.
But, in conclusion, “we’ve got some challenges. But, I’d rather be doing them in Australia than anywhere else in the world.”
