New lottery to fund Australian Olympics campaign

The federal government plans to institute a sports lottery that’s expected to raise US$74.54 million for Australia’s Tokyo Olympics campaign.

Australia.- Australia is aiming to turn around its recent poor performances at the Olympics by establishing a sports lottery that will fund the country’s Tokyo Olympics campaign. It would be part of a national sports plan and is expected to raise around US$74.54 million starting two years before Tokyo 2020.

The sports plan 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.

Wylie and Coates agree on the lottery model under which the states woud be reimbursed for losses that it may cause to those already operating within their borders, and the money that’s left will be destined to programs managed by the ASC, Australian Institute of Sport and other state-based sports institutes.

State-based ticket sales will be managed by existing state license holders while the federal goverment will asign a group to conduct nationwide, online sales. According to Sports Minister Greg Hunt, state governments are supportive of the plan and there has been no opposition to it.

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.