‘What drugs do you want?’: How betting companies lured Luke Bateman into gambling more

Former rugby league player turned BookTok influencer Luke Bateman has described being flown to interstate race days by betting companies, where he was plied with alcohol and supplied with his choice of drugs, including in the presence of senior gambling company executives.

As he told a Senate inquiry about the tactics betting companies used to induce him into wagering more money, Bateman said he would also steal money from his mother, partner and siblings so he could redeem the $1000 worth of free bonus bets that he would be offered after losing everything.

“The inducements really destroyed my life because that’s what kept you coming back… when you wanted to get out,” Bateman said. “But it also destroyed the lives of the people who loved me as well.”

The 31-year-old was one in a lineup of gambling reform advocates – including former Victorian MP Russell Northe – to outline how they were wooed by betting companies while in the depths of addiction. The Albanese government’s contentious gambling package does not ban betting inducements – despite full prohibition being recommended by the Murphy report in 2023.

“On Wednesdays and Saturdays, which are your two main race days, I would receive direct offers customised for me that basically said if you deposit $1000, we will give you $1000 in bonus bets,” Bateman said on Monday, saying those messages came through text messages and emails.

“Even if you didn’t put on a bet for one weekend, the next Wednesday and Friday, you would receive those promotions and inducements once again … directly targeted, to motivate you into gambling.”

Bateman said there were many times when his gambling was extremely erratic, and showed signs of extreme harm – turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day, on hundreds of races. But there were never any welfare checks. Instead, companies drew him in further. Bateman has previously described being in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and unable to buy groceries.

Asked by ACT Senator David Pocock to describe the most “gobsmacking examples”, Bateman said: “There were times where I would be flown interstate and taken to race days, put in marquees with alcohol and food provided all day, things like that.

“Before getting there, the VIP manager would offer: hey mate, what drugs do you want? Do you want a couple of bags for this weekend? We’ll organise that for you. We’ll have that ready for you when you get here.”

Another time, Bateman said he was hosted at an exclusive event on the canals of the Gold Coast.

“And the entire sort of C-suite of the company was there. All the management team administration, and they were sort of all in a backroom doing drugs together. And I was out in this room doing drugs with all of them. This is like the CEO, the founders, the VIP managers,” he said.

“I would have been, you know, 23 years old. So while I was absolutely … I would put my hand up and say I was a willing participant of that. These are men in positions of power with influence who should be looking out for your welfare.”

Asked whether the presence of C-suite executives meant these companies knew how the system worked, Bateman said: “Well, not only did they know, they were participating in it.”

Star Casino, Tab, Sportsbet named in evidence

A bipartisan report helmed by the late Peta Murphy in 2023 had recommended a total gambling advertising blackout, ban on inducements and national regulator. The witnesses to Monday morning said these were glaring omissions in Labor’s final legislation.

Chief gambling advocate Tim Costello said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had set himself three tests with this gambling legislation: to delink gambling and sport, protect children and reduce the saturation of gambling ads.

“We think this legislation in its present form fails those tests,” he said. “This legislation has some good aspects…. However, it’s line ball whether it’s actually better than the status quo.”

Costello shared the story of one man who would soon plead guilty to criminal offences – a financial adviser who stole $12.3 million from his company in 17 months.

“In that time, he was given free accommodation at Star Casino. He had to leave each week so they could technically say he wasn’t living there and come back the next morning,” Costello said.

“He was the Tab’s biggest customer in that time. They were giving him $50,000 bonus bets. He was also Sportsbet’s biggest customer. They were flying him to grand finals. They were offering him escorts, drugs, whatever he wanted. He was doing turnover of more than $20 million a month.”

Costello said the question for the inquiry was: “How do licensed bookmakers, who we are told are regulated, get away with this? The answer is the first recommendation of the Murphy report. We don’t have a national regulator – that’s how they’re getting away with this.”

Northe also pleaded with the inquiry to consider the issue of a national regulator. His own political career collapsed under the weight of gambling addiction – he served a year in prison after the Victorian County Court heard he falsely claimed more than $170,000 in parliamentary expenses during 2018 and 2019, while losing more than $223,000 through gambling over the same period.

“From my own experience, what happened to me quite regularly was I would open and close accounts on a regular basis, and that was a cry for help for me – closing an account, trying to get out,” he told the inquiry.

“But during that period where I was stopped gambling and I had closed an account, I would be targeted, contacted by the gambling companies to reopen [an] account again with inducements and incentives.

“Recommendation 16 of the Murphy report: it says to ban inducements without delay. Here we are what 1132 days down the track and it’s still happening. What carnage has been caused in that time?”

Another advocate Mark Kempster, said he was working with one family who had lost $500,000 in 30 days after being given $55,000 worth of bonus bets – the person had been allowed on a betting app in one part of the country, despite being self-excluded in another.

“Those types of things that happen across nearly all the major VIP programs that I’ve seen,” he said.

Both Albanese and Communications Minister Anika Wells have defended the package, saying it is stronger than current settings.

Wells on Monday addressed the issue of inducements by saying people could sign up to the self-exclusion register, BetStop. Latest data shows 40,000 people had active exclusions with BetStop as of June; advocates say about 2 million Australians are at risk.

“I would say to people who are either suffering from gambling harm or … who have been advocating in the space of inducements, to assist the cause by making sure that people who might benefit from BetStop are aware of BetStop,” Wells told reporters in Canberra.

Albanese said last month. “I think we’ve got the balance right … It actually, in some ways, goes further than [the Murphy] report went. It’s a comprehensive approach.”

Witness Kate Seselja was brought to tears as she described her frustration at Albanese’s insistence that the government’s legislation had gotten “the balance right”.

“It just was so horrible to hear him say those words when there is absolutely no balance to this equation,” she said. “The stories of people harmed by this industry: when is enough? Like when is it enough? How many of us have to line up and say this is not okay?”

Another advocate, Anne Bardsley, said it was “beyond frustrating” to know that the government had been handed a blueprint for reform with the Murphy inquiry.

“This bill is all we get, and frankly, it’s piss weak – it’s a piss weak response to a public health crisis.”

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