Many Australian sporting clubs receive money from the gambling industry — sometimes through ownership of poker machines, often through sponsorship deals on jerseys, stadium signage, and naming rights. As a member or supporter, you have more leverage than you think.
When people talk about "clubs and gambling," they're often talking about two quite distinct arrangements that get blurred together. Both are worth understanding, because each has different ethical and practical implications — and clubs respond differently to each.
Some clubs (particularly in Victoria and New South Wales) operate poker machines directly, either through the football club itself or through an affiliated leagues/social club. The revenue these machines generate flows back to the football operations.
In Victoria, four AFL clubs — Carlton, Essendon, Richmond and St Kilda — still own and operate pokies venues. According to data from the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission reported in 2025, their eight venues recorded around $40.4 million in player losses during the 2024–25 financial year.
In the NRL, the "leagues club" model means most NSW-based clubs — Canterbury Bulldogs, Penrith Panthers, Parramatta Eels, Sydney Roosters, Wests Tigers, St George Illawarra, Cronulla Sharks, Manly Sea Eagles, North Queensland Cowboys, and others — have an associated non-profit leagues club whose pokies revenue flows back into football operations. These networks can be substantial: the Penrith Panthers' associated entertainment group operates five licensed sites.
Some clubs have already exited pokies entirely. North Melbourne divested in 2008 and replaced its pokies operation with The Huddle, a not-for-profit community facility. Western Bulldogs, Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and (most recently) Melbourne have all followed.
This is the more visible side — gambling-company logos on jerseys, stadium naming rights, perimeter signage during broadcasts, and "official wagering partner" status at league level.
A 2023 Australian Gambling Research Centre study found that 96% of NRL teams and 87% of AFL teams had at least one official gambling partner. Sportsbet's seven-year deal with the AFL starting in 2025 is reportedly worth around $100 million.
At club level (current as at the 2025–26 season):
Notably, Victorian AFL clubs have been free of sports betting sponsorships since 2019, through the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation's Love the Game program. This is a major precedent: it shows that clubs can collectively step away from gambling sponsorship money and continue to operate.
The campaign argument here isn't speculative. Clubs — including big, commercially-driven ones — have already walked away from major gambling deals when their members and the community made clear it was no longer acceptable.
In December 2024, the Cronulla Sharks ended their six-year naming-rights partnership with PointsBet. The stadium has since been renamed Ocean Protect Stadium. PointsBet's CEO publicly acknowledged that community attitudes had changed and that gambling sponsorship in those formats was no longer appropriate.
Manly Sea Eagles ended their PointsBet shirt sponsorship after the 2024 season for similar reasons.
The federal government's 2027 reform package will ban in-stadium gambling advertising during AFL and NRL games, including electronic perimeter signage. This means much of the most visible gambling sponsorship infrastructure inside stadiums will need to go regardless of what individual clubs choose. The question is whether your club leads that change or has to be dragged along by regulation.
Below is a club-by-club assessment for the 18 AFL teams and 17 NRL teams, looking at how each connects to the gambling industry — through pokies operations, jersey sponsorships, stadium naming rights, casino partnerships, or wagering deals.
Each club is rated on a five-tier scale based on the visibility and direct financial weight of its gambling-industry connections.
A note on terms used below: "playing jersey" means the actual on-field uniform that players wear during games — the most visible advertising surface in sport. A "betting-company logo on the jersey" means the brand of a wagering operator (e.g. Sportsbet, TAB, Unibet, PointsBet) is printed on the front, back, or sleeve of that uniform. This is treated separately from logos on training kit, stadium signage, or marketing materials, because what appears on the playing jersey is what fans — and broadcasters — see during play.
Of the 35 elite clubs across the AFL and NRL, only the New Zealand Warriors sit clearly in Tier 1 by structural design — without pokies operations, without a gambling-industry jersey sponsor, and without a casino or wagering partner. A handful of other clubs that have divested pokies and stayed clear of betting jerseys approach Tier 1 in practice but reached that position through deliberate change rather than original structure: the Victorian AFL clubs of Geelong, Hawthorn, Melbourne and North Melbourne (with North Melbourne the longest-standing, having exited pokies in 2008), plus the Adelaide Crows, who do not operate within the Vic-AFL leagues-club model and who have committed to the South Australian Here For The Game framework. These clubs sit at Tier 2 in the rating below.
The remaining 29 clubs — the substantial majority — are connected to the gambling industry through pokies operations, sponsorship deals, or both. This is what supports the often-cited figures that 96% of NRL teams and 87% of AFL teams have at least one official gambling partner.
Methodology and confidence note: ratings reflect publicly visible information from club partner pages, financial reporting (where published), and reputable journalism. Where a club's specific current commercial partners were not visible to us, the rating is marked provisional. Partnership lists change mid-season. The 96% / 87% headline figures originate with a 2023 Australian Gambling Research Centre study; the exact methodology of that study is not fully public, so individual club ratings on this page won't always match a reconstruction of the AGRC count perfectly.
Individual clubs sit inside a larger commercial system that the campaign also takes seriously. The peak bodies of the AFL and the NRL set the league-wide commercial frameworks; the broadcasters carry the gambling advertising into homes; and the radio rights-holders extend that reach into cars and workplaces. None of this is the fault of any single club, and most of it can't be changed at club level. It needs to be discussed honestly.
Both leagues currently hold league-level commercial relationships with the gambling industry. At the AFL, the league's official wagering partner has been BetEasy and successor entities for more than a decade. At the NRL, the league has held a long-running partnership with Sportsbet. Beyond the headline partner, both leagues operate official data feeds that licence match information to wagering operators, generating significant additional revenue from the gambling sector.
The leagues' position is pivotal because the leagues set the rules clubs operate within. When AFL CEO Andrew Dillon or NRL Chair Peter V'landys make public statements about gambling sponsorship, individual clubs hear them as direction-setting. League-level decisions about broadcast deals (currently being renegotiated for both codes through to the early 2030s) will materially shape how much gambling advertising fans see in stadiums and on screen for the next decade.
The campaign rates both leagues as heavily entangled — equivalent to Tier 5 in the club rating — on the basis that league-level gambling-industry revenue through partnerships and data licensing flows into all club distributions and shapes the commercial environment in which clubs operate.
The relationship between the AFL, the NRL, and the gambling industry goes beyond sponsorship. Both leagues receive product fees from authorised wagering operators — payments calculated as a percentage of the bookmaker's turnover (the total amount wagered) or net revenue, whichever is higher. Because the fee scales with betting volume, the leagues benefit financially when more money is wagered on their matches. This is structurally different from a fixed sponsorship payment.
Then-AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan confirmed the arrangement publicly to the 2023 parliamentary inquiry, telling the committee that the league has product-fee arrangements with all wagering operators that take bets on AFL matches. The fee was reportedly set at around 0.9% of turnover, with the AFL proposing in early 2025 to lift it to 1.5% for regular matches and 2.5% for finals and multi-bet products.
Reporting in the Australian Financial Review in 2025 and academic commentary from CQUniversity place the annual revenue from these arrangements at approximately $30–$40 million for the AFL and around $50 million for the NRL. The leagues describe this revenue as funding their integrity operations — the units that monitor for match-fixing, insider betting, and suspicious wagering patterns. Leaked AFL documents reported by The Guardian in March 2025 indicated that the integrity framework has not kept pace with the scale of wagering activity, with the league acknowledging "little visibility" over the full betting turnover and several documented insider-betting incidents.
The integrity-funding framing is what the leagues say publicly. Whether the framing holds up under scrutiny is contested. Either way, the structural fact is the same: Australian football's two peak bodies have a direct, percentage-based financial interest in the volume of money wagered on their matches.
The single biggest distribution channel for gambling advertising in Australian sport is the broadcast deal. Three commercial relationships matter most:
Removing gambling advertising and sponsorship from sport requires action at all four levels — individual clubs, the league peak bodies, the broadcast partners, and the regulatory framework set by federal parliament. The 2027 reforms address the broadcast and regulatory layers; the club rating on this page, and the campaign's outreach to clubs, addresses the club layer. The peak-body layer remains the hardest to shift, because it's where the largest single commercial relationships sit.
If you support this campaign and your club has a gambling-money problem, the most effective thing you can do is raise it as a fan, with your name on it. Generic public pressure shifts clubs slowly. Pressure from members shifts them faster.
The basics are usually visible:
A short, polite, specific email to the CEO and Board chair has more impact than people expect — especially from a long-term member.
Make it specific. Suggested asks:
Cite the precedents: Victorian AFL clubs have been free of betting sponsorship since 2019. The Sharks ended their PointsBet stadium deal voluntarily in 2024. North Melbourne exited pokies in 2008. None of those clubs collapsed. The argument that "we need this revenue or we'll go broke" hasn't held up where it's been tested.
Member-owned clubs hold annual general meetings open to financial members. That's a forum where:
Lodge a question in advance if your club's process allows it. Phrase it factually: "What is the club's current position on gambling sponsorship and ownership of poker machines, and is the board considering any changes in light of the 2027 federal reforms?"
Where club boards are elected by members, vote for candidates who back this position — and ask candidates about it during election periods. A small number of members engaged on a single issue can shift outcomes in a low-turnout election.
Cheer squads, supporter groups, and online communities are where club opinion gets shaped first. If you make the argument respectfully and with the data, you'll find more agreement than you expect — particularly among parents.
AFL Fans Association surveys consistently rank gambling advertising as one of the top two or three concerns of fans. You're not arguing for a fringe position.
Support the Alliance for Gambling Reform — the lead national organisation campaigning to end gambling advertising in sport. Share OddsOffSport.org with other supporters of your club. Pass it on through group chats, club forums, and social media.
Three template emails below, calibrated to where your club currently sits on the rating above. Pick the version that matches your club, copy it into your email client, fill in the bracketed details, and send it. The emails are short by design — long advocacy emails get skimmed; short ones get read.
Send via the club's official Contact page (most clubs route to a general inbox), and address the email to “Board and CEO” in the salutation. Include your membership number if you are a member; it dramatically increases the chance the email is escalated.
Use for: Adelaide Crows, Geelong, Hawthorn, Melbourne, North Melbourne, NZ Warriors, Collingwood, Gold Coast Suns, Port Adelaide, Sydney Swans, Western Bulldogs, Dolphins, Gold Coast Titans.
Subject: Public stand on gambling sponsorship — request from a supporter
Dear [Club name] Board and CEO,
I'm writing as a supporter of an Australia-wide campaign to end gambling advertising in sport (oddsoffsport.org). The campaign is independent and not aligned with any political party.
Your club is in a position that very few elite Australian football clubs are in: as far as we can establish, [Club name] does not currently carry a betting-company logo on the playing jersey, on stadium signage, or as a major commercial partner. That is a significant and welcome position to hold, and one that some of your peer clubs are publicly walking back toward.
I'm writing to ask the club to do two things that would help shift the conversation across the codes:
The campaign isn't asking for money. It's asking the clubs that are already doing the right thing to be public about it, so that fans of clubs which haven't yet made the same choice have a clear precedent to point to.
I'd welcome a short reply, even just an acknowledgement that the request has reached the right person.
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]
[Suburb, State]
[Club membership number, if you are a member of this club]
Use for: Brisbane Lions, Fremantle Dockers, South Sydney Rabbitohs.
Subject: Request to phase out gambling sponsorship — supporter feedback
Dear [Club name] Board and CEO,
I'm writing as a supporter of an Australia-wide campaign to end gambling advertising in sport (oddsoffsport.org). The campaign is independent and not aligned with any political party.
[Club name] has, to its credit, kept gambling-company branding off the playing jersey. That is a significant choice, and one that distinguishes the club from many of its peers. I'm writing to ask the club to take the next step and phase out its current commercial partnership with [name partner if known, otherwise “wagering operators”] altogether at the end of the current contract term.
Federal reforms commencing 1 January 2027 will substantially restrict gambling advertising during AFL and NRL games, including in-stadium advertising. The direction of travel is set. Clubs that move ahead of the regulatory tightening — rather than being dragged along by it — are the ones who benefit from the public goodwill of having led the change.
Two precedents are worth noting:
Both clubs are still operating successfully. The argument that “we need this revenue or we'll go broke” hasn't held up where it's been tested.
I'd welcome a short reply outlining the club's position on the future of its gambling-industry partnerships.
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]
[Suburb, State]
[Club membership number, if applicable]
Use for: Carlton, Essendon, Richmond, St Kilda, GWS Giants, West Coast Eagles, Brisbane Broncos, Canterbury Bulldogs, Melbourne Storm, Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers, Sydney Roosters, Canberra Raiders, Cronulla Sharks, Manly Sea Eagles, Newcastle Knights, North Queensland Cowboys, St George Illawarra Dragons, Wests Tigers.
Subject: The future of gambling money at [Club name] — supporter request
Dear [Club name] Board and CEO,
I'm writing as a supporter of an Australia-wide campaign to end gambling advertising in sport (oddsoffsport.org). The campaign is independent and not aligned with any political party.
[Club name] is one of a number of [AFL/NRL] clubs whose financial model is currently reliant on gambling-industry revenue — through [select as applicable: pokies operations / a betting-company jersey sponsorship / casino partnership / stadium sponsorship arrangements]. I am writing to ask the Board to take three steps:
Federal reforms commencing 1 January 2027 will ban gambling advertising during live AFL and NRL games. Clubs that wait will have the change forced on them; clubs that act now will be credited for it. The Cronulla Sharks ended their PointsBet stadium naming rights in December 2024 voluntarily. Manly ended their PointsBet jersey deal after the 2024 season. Both decisions cited changing community attitudes.
The argument that pokies and gambling sponsorship are essential to the club's survival deserves to be tested in public. The clubs that have already exited those revenue streams have not collapsed.
Members and supporters are noticing. I'd welcome a substantive reply.
Yours sincerely,
[Your name]
[Suburb, State]
[Club membership number, if applicable]
Use each club's official Contact page on its website. AFL clubs typically use
[clubname]fc.com.au/club/about/contact. NRL clubs typically use
[teamname].com.au/contact-us. Most clubs route external correspondence
through a general inbox; addressing your email to “Board and CEO” in the
salutation is sufficient for it to be routed correctly internally.
Don't try to guess CEO direct email addresses. They are typically not published, and guessed addresses are more likely to bounce or be filtered as spam than to reach the right person.
Sport is meant to be a community institution. Gambling money makes it harder for clubs to be that. The good news is that this conversation is moving — the regulatory environment is tightening, big-name partnerships are ending, and supporters are speaking up. Where the change has happened, it's been because members made it happen.
If you love your club, this isn't an argument against the club. It's an argument for the club to be the kind of institution it claims to be in its public statements.
Specific club partnership and revenue figures change year to year. The patterns described on this page are stable; the precise dollar figures may differ from the most recently published financial reports of individual clubs.