Former professional rugby league player opens up about devastating gambling addiction

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A former NRL player has opened up about a devastating gambling addiction that saw him lose half a million dollars. Luke Bateman played for the Canberra Raiders before retiring in 2019 with a knee injury. In an interview with triple j Hack, he says at the worst of his addiction, he couldn't even afford groceries, despite being on a lucrative contract.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, it was really interesting, Roz.

00:03We had Luke on for actually another chat.

00:05We were talking about books because he's developed this huge profile over the past year as being

00:10a bit of an ambassador for men reading and books generally.

00:14But in the course of that interview, I asked him about his NRL career and wanted him to

00:18reflect on that.

00:19And he said, to be honest, no one asks me about this, but I don't reflect on it very

00:24well because I was in the midst of all of these battles with mental health and addiction.

00:30And he spelled it out that he had this horrible, horrible gambling addiction for years.

00:36And as you say, he was a person who was earning an extraordinary amount of money, $400,000

00:41a year.

00:42But he said, even still, he couldn't afford to buy groceries.

00:46His mum was paying his mortgage.

00:48And he estimates that he lost half a million dollars to gambling in just a couple of years.

00:53So really devastating stuff.

00:56We talked to Luke on Hack and he spoke to us about some of his experiences and when he

01:03tried to overcome his addiction.

01:05Here's a little of what he had to say.

01:08She got to the point where I said, no, this goes sort of one or two ways and it either ends

01:14up with me in a coffin or I get help.

01:18Like that's the only two options that I have left.

01:21So I'm at the, I've ridden this train to the end of the tracks and there's only, it's

01:24either go back or there's no sort of, no, no further to go.

01:29So did he say anything about the culture of gambling within the NRL day?

01:34Yeah.

01:34Well, he said at that time it was really normalized.

01:36And he said, to be honest, I'd say half of my team had gambling addictions, probably

01:41not to the same extent that I did.

01:44But there was just this culture of you'd finish training, you'd go and put some bets on and

01:49it was all too easy.

01:51He talked about this really kind of toxic culture within rugby league.

01:55He said it was corrosive to young men.

01:57That was his, that was his description and said it's win at all costs.

02:01And it drives all of these really negative and harmful habits like gambling and said a lot

02:07of his mates were in very similar situations.

02:10So he said there's a lot of work to be done there.

02:13So what does he want to see change?

02:15He didn't have any exact specific reform that he'd like to see, but he did say he feels the

02:21issue is it's just too easy to gamble.

02:24He says all these young guys are walking around with bookies in the palm of their hands because

02:28it's so easy on an app.

02:30You can be on your phone and it appears that you might be sending a message or checking your

02:34social media.

02:35But in reality, he was putting on $10,000 bets and losing his life savings.

02:39So he said it needs to be made harder for people to access gambling, especially young

02:44people.

02:45And he said, well, he's not an expert on gambling and he doesn't know what the reforms

02:49should be.

02:50It's clear the government does need to take action.

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