11
Australia’s Economic Mores through the Lens
of the Professional Sports Industry
Individual Rights or State Paternalism?
Richard Pomfret
Spectator sports play a major role in Australia and in many Australians’
identities. Sports are sometimes dividing when a grandfinal takes place, but
they can unify the nation when a cricket test series or America’s Cup race
features Australia, or when a mega-event like the Olympic Games is held in
Australia. Around half of adult Australians are spectators at a sporting event
during a year, and the Melbourne Cup is the race that stops the nation.^1 As
elsewhere, sports have become a major industry, with billion-dollar TV con-
tracts for the most popular winter team sports and overfifty Australian sports
players earning over a million dollars a year (Table 11.1).
The sports industry highlights a paradox at the heart of Australian excep-
tionalism: the contrast between the self-perception of Australians as rugged
individualists and the existence of an intrusive state. Sport is one of the few
areas in Australian life where the tall poppy syndrome is muted, and sports
stars, even in team events, are esteemed and idolized. At the same time, the
sports industry is characterized by regulations on employees’rights to bargain
or to choose their employer or workplace location that would be unaccept-
able, and even illegal, in the rest of the economy; in no other major sporting
nation are such restrictions as extreme as in Australian domestic competitions,
(^1) In 2010 43% of Australians over 15 were spectators at a live sporting event (ABS 2012). The
most popular sports, measured by number of different individuals attending, were Australian Rules
football, horseracing, rugby league, motor sports, soccer, cricket, rugby union, harness racing,
tennis, and dog racing. From 1880 the Melbourne Cup repeatedly attracted crowds of 100,000;
today it is watched by millions on TV, and is a public holiday in Victoria.