Stepping down at the end of the Australian Football League聽(AFL) season, chief executive officer聽 has been quoted as saying he wanted to leave when the 鈥淎FL was in as good a shape as it can be鈥.
While that may be true of the actual game, his legacy to society is completely different. McLachlan is leaving the AFL in bed with gambling and multinational bookmakers聽and contributing on a massive scale to the gambling problems affecting the country's聽youth.
About has a problem with gambling 鈥 an average of one in every high school classroom 鈥 with teenagers being to develop gambling problems than adults.
The game is riddled with gambling advertising from jumpers, to electronic signage at the games, ad breaks and sponsored crosses to celebrities letting us know the odds and the myriad of ways we can bet on every match.
Not only is the AFL聽celebrating gambling, under McLachlan鈥檚 watch聽it is looking for more ways to embed it into the game聽while celebrating the game and how to encourage more people to attend聽matches and watch it on TV.
Someone needs to tell McLachlan now about the flow-on impact of gambling on young people he is helping to create. These include poor academic performance, absenteeism from school, early school dropout and with family and friends.
The seriousness of the problem has been identified and acknowledged at club level, with individual clubs exiting the pokies business (although some are still taking sponsorship money from bookmakers).
But McLachlan is ignoring it in the boardroom. While his time at the helm may be remembered for the growth of the West Australian Football League, more cash from sales of the TV rights and a successful negotiation of the COVID-19 pandemic, these short-term successes will be overshadowed by the damage the game is doing to a generation of young football lovers unless the AFL acts now.
McLachlan is heading out the door, leaving聽this problem in the too-hard basket for future CEOs.