Australian Olympic President John Coates has "set aside his bitter rivalry" with Australian Sports Commission Chair John Wylie to back the establishment of a national lottery "in the hope of arresting Australia’s sporting decline," according to Jeffery & Le Grand of THE AUSTRALIAN. Coates, a "vocal critic" of the ASC’s Winning Edge funding model, on Monday endorsed Wylie’s campaign to create an online lottery that would provide up to A$50M ($37.4M) in "additional funds for a sports system run down by years of budget austerity." Coates said, "We are absolutely supportive of the push for an online national lottery -- it's critical." The support of Coates, a long-serving president of the Australian Olympic Committee and a senior figure within the int'l Olympic movement, "will deliver a significant boost" to Wylie’s prospects of convincing the federal government to support the plan. It came as anti-gambling Senator Nick Xenophon indicated "he would not oppose, as a matter of principle, the creation of a new lottery product so long as it was marketed responsibly." Although Xenophon was "lukewarm on the idea of the sports commission joining the gaming industry, he said lotteries were the least harmful form of gambling." Xenophon said, "I am more concerned about the impact of poker machines and online sports betting and casino games rather than online lotteries." In Britain, the National Lottery last year generated A$3B in revenue. Of that, about A$417M "made its way in grants to Sport England, Sports Council of Northern Ireland, Sport Scotland, Sports Council of Wales and UK Sport" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 11/29).
