Racism Forces Sportsbet to Shut Down Greyhound Betting Market

Sportsbet, an Australian online sports betting operator, decided to take down the betting market on the final race at Maitland Greyhound Track after a racist comment appeared on its live feed. The controversy involved Ezra Man, a dog named after Ezra Mam, an Australian rugby player of indigenous origin.

To make matters worse, the comment came in the wake of another racism-related controversy involving the athlete.

A few days earlier, the rugby player had been called a “monkey” by his fellow player Spencer Leniu. That comment was recorded at a National Rugby League exhibition match on March 2. While Leniu tried to justify his comment as a case of a “brown man saying something to another brown man,” a league tribunal said that “monkey” is, without any doubt, a slur of a serious nature. As a result Leniu, himself of Samoan origin, was handed an eight-match suspension.

However, Mam was in for another derogatory comment. Mere hours after Leniu accepted his penalty, a racist message appeared in the form of a comment directed toward Mam’s. The feed in question, provided to Sportsbet by Greyhound Racing New South Wales, read:

Go Bananas! Let’s see IF we can get some positive Headlines, tonight?

Sportsbet feed comment

The greyhound was the favorite to win the race, which eventually it did. As a result of the controversy, however, fans of Ezra Man were unable to capitalize on the greyhound’s momentum.

Sportsbet and GRNSW Are “Extremely Disappointed”

A Sportsbet spokesperson slammed the “highly offensive and inappropriate comments supplied by a third party,” expressing his “extreme disappointment” in the fact that they were published on his company’s platforms.

The spokesperson emphasized that the Sportsbet team does not tolerate such behavior and vowed to continue calling it out. He apologized to everyone who might have been offended by the racist comment.

Greyhound Racing NSW was likewise unhappy with the comment. The organization said:

GRNSW will not tolerate this kind of behavior and appropriate action has been taken.

Greyhound Racing NSW statement

The author of the original comment has been reportedly fired.