Tomorrow night when AFL teams Richmond and Collingwood play in the preliminary finals we have a key moment to disrupt the billion dollar pokies industry that’s tearing Australian families apart.

But we need your help to do it.

Richmond pockets millions of dollars a year from pokie machines it owns. Collingwood just recently, after months of community pressure, announced that it was pulling out of pokies.

If Collingwood can do it, Richmond can too.

Can you please join us and ask Richmond to be a bit more like Collingwood and get out of the pokies business?

Footy is a uniquely Australian sport. Pokies are a uniquely Australian problem.

Australians make up 0.3% of the world’s population yet we have 75% of the world’s ‘pub and club’ pokie machines. Richmond own 97 of these which bring in over $5m a year to its coffers.

Every piece of these destructive machines is designed to be addictive. Experiments show they manipulate the exact same parts of your brain as cocaine.

And, like all forms of addiction, some people are more vulnerable to its traps than others. Far too many pokies victims lose their homes, livelihoods and jobs. These machines are even linked to increased family violence.

This grubby industry has no place tied to our national game.

Sporting codes are powerful cultural institutions. But they’re also big businesses and they should be held to account for how they get their money and where they spend it.

Just last week SumOfUs members like you scored a big win: after months of pressure we pushed Liverpool Football Club to end its sponsorship deal with Tibet water, a company that owes its profits to the repression, torture and denial of political freedoms that have become commonplace in Tibet.

September is the most important month of the year in AFL. And especially as reigning premiers, all eyes are on Richmond. If we can push Richmond to ditch pokies it will yet another blow to the social license of the craven pokies industry.

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