‘Rite of passage’: School gambling labelled rife as experts warn of dangers

Students are illegally gambling online, getting around supposed age limits with ease and using phones to place bets while at school.

Social media gambling influencers, ads on games or streaming platforms, the ease of setting up betting accounts and the normalisation or parental facilitation of betting have contributed to a rise in teen gambling habits, experts say.

It’s illegal for anyone to gamble under the age of 18, yet 2025 Australia Institute research that analysed data from 2017, 2023 and 2024 found more than 902,000 Australians aged 12 to 19 gambled annually, enough to fill the MCG about nine times over. About 600,000 were aged between 12 and 17.

Monash University associate professor Charles Livingstone, a gambling researcher, said it was easy for teens to set up betting accounts, especially if they already had money from a part-time job.

“If you beg, borrow or steal somebody’s ID, you can set up an account almost instantly,” Livingstone said.

He called the online media presence of gambling promoters “extraordinary at the moment”, with social media influencers using gambling as “their schtick” to promote poker machines as well as illegal gambling sites, including offshore casinos that are unlicensed in Australia.

Livingstone said there were also “weird little operators” taking bets on school-level football games and on club-level soccer in suburban Melbourne.

“At every level you can think of, and a lot you can’t, there is somebody trying to sell kids on gambling.”

Jack, 22, given a pseudonym as he asked to remain anonymous, went to a private school and said roughly 25 per cent of his year 12 peers were betting. He started gambling when he was about 16.

“A mate had a big win. [I was thinking] that seems easy. That’s when you start going along with it. You either win, and think it’s easy, and then you lose and you start chasing that loss,” he said.

“Boys punted at school – on our phones, in class, at lunchtime, just wherever.”

His classmates weren’t allowed phones in class but snuck them in. They made fake accounts under their names using false ages and deposited money but never verified their accounts.

“It sounds stupid – even if we won a lot of money, we couldn’t withdraw it. We were just young and dumb. Not making the right decisions.”

After he graduated, he put all of his money – $3500 – on one horse and lost it in one bet. That’s when he knew he had to stop.

In June, a gambling website illegally soliciting bets on sporting clashes between Victoria’s most elite private schools was reported to state and federal authorities.

The Associated Public Schools group, which consists of 11 schools, including Geelong Grammar, Brighton Grammar and Scotch College, notified the state’s gaming authority and the federal communications watchdog to investigate the site.

An Australian Communications and Media Authority spokesperson said it continued to investigate but had pulled the site down.

In 2023, the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission banned betting on any sport in which all the participants are minors.

Melbourne teachers Haydn Flanagan and Matthew Sekfy, who have been teaching for 25 years, said they had seen gambling become completely normalised among students in the past four or five years.

They have both found students looking at odds in classrooms, sneaking off to bet and openly discussing their wins. One boy cheered in class because he had won $500; another lost $1000.

Together Flanagan and Sekfy created Gambling Education Australia, and they deliver preventive sessions to schools and sports clubs in Melbourne and Queensland.

“There’s no stigma whatsoever, no thought that it needs to be hidden,” Flanagan said. “Particularly as the weekend comes up, they’re talking about what they’re gambling on, who they’re backing.

“It’s a rite of passage almost in some segments of the community. I’d say particularly rife within the boys’ schools.”

He said parent-supported gambling was adding to the problem.

CQUniversity psychology lecturer Dr Cassy Dittman’s research, released in July, found parents were relatively unconcerned about gambling and that parental facilitation – where parents spoke positively about wins or placed bets on their children’s behalf – was the strongest predictor of both teen gambling and gambling problems.

Alliance for Gambling Reform lived experience advocate Mark Kempster said that in the past 12 months the fastest rise in gambling he had seen was among teens rather than any other demographic.

“It is more of the private school kids who tend to fall into it quicker and put themselves in bigger holes because of the money they have access to,” he said.

Kempster, who gives gambling harm talks in Tasmanian schools, said teachers called him at least monthly about problem gambling in their schools.

“I think schools are unaware or naive as to how big a problem this is becoming across all schools,” he said.

Government school internet services are filtered to block access to gambling, pornography and other age-inappropriate content.

But Kempster said students were gambling at lunchtime, using VPNs or their own phones. He cited the example of a 17-year-old who had been left $20,000 by his late father, and gambled it all away.

“He was an emotional wreck.”

Former Geelong Grammar student Henry Brayshaw, now 29, said gambling was an “institution in the private school system”.

Brayshaw’s gambling addiction, which started in a pub when he was 16, led to a $180,000 debt at its worst.

“It’s like bread and butter for young men out of private school. Really parents with lots of money, kids with credit cards that have got no limits, no true understanding for the value of money,” he said.

“It [became] a deeply embedded, passed down through generations, cultural gambling problem from the moment I entered Geelong Grammar until I left in 2015.”

He said some young gamblers didn’t understand the depth of their addiction until they left school.

His father, James Brayshaw, a former host of The Footy Show and a sporting commentator, had voiced a 2021 Sportsbet campaign.

Henry Brayshaw said they’d become estranged, but not because of gambling. “I would love him to be an advocate against [gambling],” he said. “He always told me … don’t get hooked in or sucked in.”

In term 2 this year, Geelong Grammar vice principal Tom Hall communicated with secondary school parents about the growing prevalence of sports gambling among young people and to “make [them] aware of a range of measures designed to support students and parents” through education about gambling risks.

Gambling harm posters are hung around the school, and students are encouraged to speak with a trusted adult or the school’s counselling team if they are concerned.

Livingstone said the number of gambling promotions on social media and by influencers was overwhelming, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority needed more resources to tackle the problem.

“It’s a major lapse in the regulatory system that this stuff just happens without anyone seemingly intervening in it,” he said.

ACMA issued a warning against a social media influencer for breaching online gambling rules in July. ACMA member Carolyn Lidgerwood said it should also serve as a warning to others.

Australians are banned from promoting illegal gambling services and can face fines of up to $59,400, or up to $2,475,000 if facilitating access through hyperlinks.

In August, the federal government passed laws that will restrict advertising related to licensed gambling operators on TV and online from January 1.

A Department of Education spokesperson said Victorian schools taught students about the risks of gambling by building an understanding of probability and chance, developing critical analysis skills of media such as gambling ads and promoting strategies for seeking help.

Schools can also access Be Ahead of the Game to help young people understand the risks of gambling.