AFL tells Sportsbet to stop using players in AI videos

What the videos showed

One video depicted former Brisbane Lions player Lachie Neale receiving an award at his new club, Collingwood. His image was altered to recreate Snoop Dogg’s 2018 Hollywood Walk of Fame speech, in which Neale thanked himself for believing in himself and for the work he had done.

Another showed Brisbane Lions player Will Ashcroft, a two-time Norm Smith medallist, saying a line from Ozark: “If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to kill me.” Sportsbet framed it as Ashcroft’s reaction to Fremantle staging Wharfie Time in the final quarter of the 2026 AFL grand final.

The bookmaker also made AI images of Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell and former North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson. The posts had age restrictions. Sportsbet removed the videos from its Instagram page on Tuesday afternoon after Guardian Australia contacted the company.

The AFL Players Association (AFLPA) objected to the content. Late the previous week, it wrote to the league, arguing that the videos breached the collective agreement’s limits on partners’ use of player images.

Consent meets an old agreement

AFLPA general manager of legal affairs Alex Taverner said players’ AI images should not be used without their permission. The association asked the AFL to secure the videos’ removal and stop the use of AI images and videos of players without consent. Taverner said the league would work with Sportsbet to remove the content.

The AFL said it would keep discussing AI content with its partners as the technology develops. A Sportsbet spokesperson said the company makes material to entertain fans and sustain interest in sport, and that it takes partner feedback into account while continuing discussions with the AFL.

The 2023–2027 collective agreement permits Sportsbet to use player images and video without permission only in specified circumstances and subject to restrictions. It says nothing about AI.

Independent Australian Capital Territory senator David Pocock, a former professional athlete who works on gambling and AI issues, said the case showed the need for stronger regulation. He argued that creating AI images of athletes without consent to promote harmful gambling products and seek public approval exposed problems in company conduct and a lack of protection against deepfakes.

Mark Johnson, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who has studied social media influencers and gambling, said Sportsbet could have acted more cautiously. He suggested someone at the company may have made the decision without considering that athletes’ images can themselves be part of their brands and something they own.

The gap is the point

I think the central issue is not whether the videos were meant as jokes. It is that the agreement sets boundaries for player imagery while leaving AI unaddressed, and the AFLPA is now asking the league to apply consent rules to a format the document does not name.

Johnson’s account points to a more basic failure: treating a player’s likeness as raw material for a campaign, rather than as part of that person’s identity and brand. The AFL can negotiate with Sportsbet over these videos, but the dispute leaves the larger question of how consent works in AI content still unresolved.