An online gambling addiction was a “direct and paramount” cause of a young man’s suicide, a Victorian coroner has ruled in a scathing assessment of one of Australia’s largest wagering giants.
In the findings of the landmark case, Coroner Paul Lawrie found that Sportsbet fed Kyle Hudson’s habit with hundreds of gambling inducements and rejected evidence that the betting agency did not consider the 22-year-old to be a problem gambler, despite him putting self-imposed limits on his account on seven separate occasions.
“I am satisfied that when Kyle put these deposit limits in place, he was trying to very drastically reduce the amount he was putting into his Sportsbet account,” Lawrie said in his findings on Tuesday.
“The repeated setting and cancelling of deposit limits was not recognised by Sportsbet as a warning sign that Kyle was struggling to control his gambling. In all the circumstances apparent at the time, it should have been.”
Lawrie said he found it “chilling” that despite mounting evidence from gambling harm experts and harrowing testimony from Hudson’s partner about the depths of his addiction, Sportsbet still insisted there had been no addiction issue.
“Sportsbet maintains that Kyle was not suffering from problem gambling,” he said. “I do not accept this proposition.”
Within minutes of placing his last losing bet online on July 6 in 2021, Hudson was Googling methods for suicide on his laptop, the Coroners Court previously heard.
His mother found the 22-year-old’s body in the shed of the family’s Werribee home that evening.
“I find that Kyle’s online gambling was the direct and paramount causative factor underlying his decision to take his own life,” Lawrie said.
A visibly emotional Lawrie held back tears when addressing Hudson’s family who were sitting in the front row of the court, telling them he could only imagine how difficult it had been for them to sit through the inquest.
“Kyle was a young man brimming with promise,” Lawrie said. “His story is heartbreaking.”
Beginning when he was 18, the inquest previously heard Hudson gambled almost $900,000 over four years and had been granted a $1 million monthly deposit limit on his online betting account with bet365 within his first year of gambling.
Two years later, another betting company blacklisted him not for his own safety, but because he was winning too much.
Entain, the British-headquartered company which operates Ladbrokes and Neds in Australia, had detected the university student was betting “both sides of the line” and winning too often, so staff restricted his account from promotions, such as bonus bets, to protect their own profits.
When the court asked each of the relevant betting companies to provide details of their advertising expenditure in Australia, they provided the information secretly under a claim of commercial sensitivity privilege. Lawrie said the information revealed a level of expenditure on gambling advertising in Australia that was “arresting”.
“Kyle did not decide out of nowhere to open his first betting account on his 18th birthday,” he said.
“He was primed by the phenomenon that was swirling around him before he turned 18.”
Lawrie probed several factors, including Hudson’s frequent interactions with online betting agencies, and how his history of gambling may have contributed to his decision to end his life.
The inquest heard the talented sportsman was repeatedly drawn back to online betting platforms after being flooded by almost 500 targeted inducements. More than 300 of those inducements came from Sportsbet, and 72 came from bet365.
The inquest was told Hudson was “highly responsive” to the barrage of targeted gambling inducements.
Gambling harm expert Associate Professor Sean Cowlishaw said there appeared to be a pattern in which Hudson would attempt to reduce or stop his gambling for periods of time before a targeted offer would ultimately lure him back.
In damning evidence earlier this year, the inquest was told Hudson’s gambling triggered Sportsbet’s internal warning, which can signal potential harm, 37 times.
On one occasion, the alarm was sparked after Hudson deposited $9000 on bets in a week. He was given a 14-day account break.
Sarah Rizzo, director of customer operations at Sportsbet, provided evidence that many of these internal alerts were reviewed manually by staff, who determined “no further action” was required at the time.
Sportsbet suspended Hudson’s account eight separate times after safety warnings, but unlocked it each time after he called them and said he was betting within his budget.
Rizzo said under Sportsbet’s current monitoring and “real-time intervention program”, if the new algorithms were applied retroactively to Hudson’s account activity, he would have triggered an alert on an additional 33 occasions, bringing his total alerts to 70.
But Lawrie said he believed Sportsbet’s safety mechanisms remained fundamentally flawed and warned online betting agencies cannot be trusted to monitor and manage problem gambling.
Lawrie said gambling reform was urgently needed in Australia and made sweeping recommendations including the establishment of a National Data Vault to track betting activity across online platforms.
He also called for the establishment of a single national online gambling regulator and the introduction of mandatory deposit and loss limits to protect young account holders.
“Kyle’s case reveals, in the sharpest relief, the human cost of online gambling,” he said.
“It should be a clear signal that we cannot leave monitoring and intervention solely in the hands of the betting companies.”
Hudson’s partner of seven years, Ashley Baker, described him as “kindest person ever” and said he was adored by everyone who knew him.
“He had a quiet, gentle nature, but with the people he loved most, he opened up completely,” she told the court earlier this year.
“What happened to Kyle can easily happen, and it’s happening to young men across Australia,” she said, telling the court she remained devastated by his death.
“Kyle mattered. He was deeply loved.”
In his evidence to the inquest, Hudson’s older brother, Ryan, said his family had “tortured” themselves with thoughts about what they could have done to save him.
“How can we accept this as a society?” he asked. “The betting agencies did know the impact this gambling was having, and not only did they do very little about it, they encouraged him to engage in risky behaviour by offering inducements.”
A spokesman for Sportsbet told The Age the company respected the inquest and was carefully reviewing the coroner’s findings and recommendations.
“Sportsbet acknowledges there is more to do, and we remain committed to continually strengthening consumer protections,” he said, calling Hudson’s death tragic.
Gambler’s Help: 1800 858 858. Lifeline: 13 11 14.
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