Former NRL player Luke Bateman has broken down in tears speaking about the crippling gambling addiction he had during his football career.
Bateman, 30, played 71 games for the Canberra Raiders between 2015 and 2019 and also represented Queensland’s Under-20 State of Origin team.
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He went on to appear on The Bachelor, and is now best known for going viral on TikTok this year as the wholesome “hot farmer” who loves to talk about books.
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Since going viral on social media for his fantasy book reviews, Bateman has spoken about how he gambled his NRL salary away and had little to financially to show for his career despite being on a healthy wage.
Speaking on Nine’s A Current Affair on Wednesday, Bateman became emotional recalling the help his mum gave him after he gambled away everything.
“I was on a very high income in the NRL and I had no money in the bank,” Bateman told A Current Affair.
“My mum was paying my mortgage for me. I couldn’t buy groceries. I would go a day without eating because I simply could not by food.”
Asked why he was getting emotional, Bateman said: “It does make me teary because mum … she gave me life and she also saved my life.
“To cause her so much pain, it hurts me a lot.”
Last month Bateman told Triple J Hack he was earning over $400,000 a year playing footy and was still spending far more than he earned and over the course of two to three years, he would have easily gambled away over $500,000.
“I was broke,” he said. “It was debilitating and horrible.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the space of two or three years.”
The 30-year-old stressed that he now takes responsibility for his actions when he was in the throes of addiction.
“The accountability and ownership of it rely solely on me,” he said.
Bateman explained that eventually, his addiction had taken over his entire life, and he reached a point where he realised he had to confront the issue.
“It actually got to point where I said, ‘this goes one or two ways, it either ends up with me in a coffin or I get help,” he said.
Bateman said that there’s no denying that he was just “very sad” at the time and it was really tough issue to confront because gambling is so normalised.
“I would say half of the football team had gambling addictions,” he said.
However, he stressed gambling in Australia goes far beyond just footy culture; he sees it as a significant issue that many young men face.
“It is a really big problem,” he said.
Bateman is now living out of a caravan in rural Queensland and working as a logging contractor cutting down pine trees in a harvester.
His social media following has exploded since he began posting reviews of Fantasy novels on TikTok earlier this year.
He has since announced a two-book deal with Atria Books Australia, a division of Simon and Schuster, and is hosting a new book review podcast.
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