ALNA against Olympics lottery

The Australian association said that the proposed sports lottery to fund the Olympics team could hurt other social services.

Australia.- The Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association (ALNA) expressed its concerns over a possible sports betting lottery that would raise US$74.54 million for Australia’s Tokyo Olympics campaign in 2020. The deadline to submit suggestions regarding the government’s proposal was last Monday.

ALNA claimed that if lottery taxes get redistributed in order to fund the sports program, other social causes, like the money that go to schools and charities, could be cut. Adam Joy, ALNA’s chief executive, said: “It seems like they’re running full steam ahead … without doing enough consultation. It just doesn’t make sense to take it away to fund sports.” The official suggested that online betting companies should pay a point of consumption tax: “Online wagering companies are benefiting considerably from sport in Australia and therefore should have a role in supporting it.”

The initiative was revealed in May, when the government announced the plan that includes the creation of a national integrity tribunal to determine doping, match-fixing and other serious charges against athletes, in addition to the sports lottery. It originates as a response to the poor results in the previous Olympics and the shrinking of the sports budget, plus a dispute between Australian Sports Commission (ASC) chairman John Wylie and Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates.

The idea is to copy Great Britain’s lottery-based funding model. Their team gets twice as much allocations than Australia’s Olympic Team. In the last six years, government funding for the ASC has decreased by US$12.7 million to US$187.1 million. The lottery is expected to start on July 1, 2018 according to Minister Hunt’s proposal, meaning that Team Australia would benefit from two full years of lottery fundraising before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.