Violence during major sporting events is predictable – and preventable. So why are governments still failing to adequately regulate gambling and alcohol?
As the clock ticks past 8pm this evening, Game 1 of the 2026 State of Origin will be upon us. Beers will flow, bets placed and emotions will bubble over. And, once again, police and specialist services across the country will brace for the predictable spike in domestic and family violence.
Alcohol, gambling and sport are deeply intertwined in the Australian psyche. This is not by accident. It reflects a clear choice: prioritisation of commercial interests over tangible regulatory action that would mitigate harms and save lives.
Sportsbet’s sponsorship will be front and centre this evening. We know the drill – complete saturation of advertising with seductive “bet with mates” features sold to young men and boys with the promise of fragile connection and banter.
The integration of gambling into sport has normalised betting as part of fandom and masculinity itself. Yet gambling-related harms are strongly associated with financial stress, relationship conflict, coercive control and family violence.
Commercial interests run right to the very top. Peter V’landys himself, Chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission who stepped in as Acting CEO earlier this week, has been CEO at Racing NSW since 2004. Likewise, after departing as AFL CEO, Gillon McLachlan took up the helm as Managing Director and CEO of Australian wagering giant Tabcorp.
Alcohol will be shamelessly in the face of all watching Origin tonight too. Tooheys and Jim Beam will emblazon the NSW jersey while XXXX will take pride of place on the Queensland jersey. The message is clear: man up and drink up.
Let the good times roll, right? Consider this enthusiastic embrace of alcohol and gambling against the reality facing so many women and children across our nation.
Earlier this month in the Gympie Magistrates Court, Magistrate Bevan Hughes considered the case of a 37-year-old man who threw his partner through a window threatening to kill her and assaulted his 14-year-old step son leaving him with damaged vision. The prosecution described the offending as “a sustained course of violent, alcohol-fuelled offending”. In his sentencing, the Magistrate reflected, “We as a community have had a gutful of men treating women, and in your case (including) a child, with actual physical violence.”
This is not an isolated incident. A report released late last year by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education found alcohol was involved in almost half of police-reported family and domestic violence incidents. Similarly, over half of women who experience sexual or physical assaults report alcohol as a contributing factor.
Despite longstanding evidence linking alcohol misuse and gambling-related harm to increased risk and impact of family as well as sexual violence, governments continue to acknowledge these increases as unfortunate side effects rather than preventable harms requiring systemic intervention.
This is not only about men’s violence against women. Many children and young people will experience abuse, intimidation, coercive control and alcohol-fuelled aggression firsthand as well as the fear and ongoing instability resulting from a parent’s gambling losses and substance misuse. Children are also all too often present in homes where violence escalates during major sporting events.
Children are not simply witnesses to these dynamics – they are victim-survivors first and foremost. They can also learn from these experiences – they learn what masculinity looks like, how conflict is managed, and whether aggression, intimidation and control are tolerated. For boys in particular, repeated exposure to aggression and control can shape harmful norms around masculinity, relationships and entitlement.
Research in Australia and internationally consistently demonstrates that childhood experiences of violence and abuse impact mental health and wellbeing, educational outcomes and later use of violence across the life course among other impacts. If our governments are committed to ending gender-based violence in one generation, the stated goal of our 10-year National Plan, prevention efforts must include reducing children’s exposure to environments where violence, alcohol misuse and gambling are normalised and amplified.
Our message is that while awareness campaigns are a component of prevention work, more is needed. Governments must regulate the industries and environments that are well known to increase risk. Fundamentally, governments cannot continue to claim they are committed to the prevention of domestic, family and sexual violence while allowing harmful industries to remain embedded and legitimised at the very heart of our society including at the centre of Australia’s sporting culture.
And the good news is we have many of the policy solutions already.
A blueprint for how prevention can be achieved through regulation was recently provided in the findings of the South Australian Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence. Reporting in 2025 and led by Natasha Stott Despoja, the Royal Commission recommended tighter restrictions on alcohol sales and delivery including a minimum two hour ‘safety pause’ between order and delivery; and a review of the relevant legislation to make harm minimisation a paramount consideration for governments when making decisions on gambling and alcohol.
These are not radical proposals. They are evidence-informed public health and violence prevention measures. And nor are they specific to South Australia – these are recommended reforms that every Australian state and territory government can and should implement now.
There’s no shortage of other long talked about proposals waiting to be implemented. Put simply – governments have what they need to act now. They should ban gambling advertising during live sport, progress with timely implementation of mandatory pre-commitment for pokie machines and introduce mandatory closure periods for gaming venues. To better prevent alcohol harms, governments should ban alcohol marketing during major sporting events, ban push notifications prompting an alcohol purchase, explicitly recognise gender based violence as a form of alcohol harm in the relevant legislation, and mandate health warnings on retail websites selling alcohol.
Governments must move beyond reactive responses after violence occurs and toward tangible commitments to prevent that very violence from occurring in the first place. Because when spikes in violence are predictable, failing to act is ultimately a deliberate political choice.
We’d never push pause on the State of Origin. And, yet, we tolerate a seemingly indefinite pause on many actions that would address the harms of gambling and alcohol. Commercial interests trump women and children’s safety. It’s as simple as that and nothing will change until each of us demands more from both our political leaders and major sporting codes.
So tonight, absolutely, enjoy the game. But if you can spare a moment, drop a note on your social media platform of choice – “Enough – please take action to prevent men’s violence against women and children through greater regulation of alcohol and gambling” and tag #MakeNRLsafe.