Australia: all our coverage

Australia's media regulator has formally warned two former Brisbane Lions players for promoting Vegastars, an offshore casino it had already ordered blocked. It is the second time this year ACMA has chosen a warning over a civil penalty for an athlete-influencer, and the promotions ran after the block was in place.

Ontario's regulator has settled the first suspension it has sought against a licensed igaming operator, cutting five days to two and adding an independent audit. It has not said why the penalty shrank, when the site goes dark, or whether any money changes hands.

SkyCity Entertainment Group will give interested parties due diligence information on the entire business, though its chair told shareholders that no new or improved proposal has arrived since the two it rejected. The same morning its chief executive said it bid for two online casino licences rather than three to stay within its return targets.

Australia's media regulator has published its first guidance on the ban on athletes, celebrities, influencers and prominent individuals in wagering advertising, and it draws the line wide: there is no follower count, no time limit on "former", and the legal risk sits entirely with the bookmaker. The rules start on 1 January 2027.

The UK group behind the Press Association will pay A$1.04 a share in cash for the ASX-listed racing data supplier and fold it into its Podium business. The PA's own release left the price out; RAS's filing shows the bid nearly doubles what the market thought the company was worth.

SkyCity Entertainment Group has signed a binding agreement to sell The Grand Hotel in Auckland for NZ$221 million, about $124 million, to two companies from a privately owned property group. With the office sale already settled, it says it has now raised more from asset sales than it promised shareholders, but the deal still needs Overseas Investment Office consent.

Entain's British online business grew 14% under the new 40% gaming duty, while customer-friendly football results and a Brazilian unit that shrank by more than a third before the ban held the group to 2%. Guidance survives with profit pinned to the bottom of the range, and the chief executive used the update to lobby the government before the Budget.

The league's official wagering partner has deleted AI-generated clips of Lachie Neale and Will Ashcroft after the players' union complained and Guardian Australia asked about them. From 1 January, Australian law will stop licensed bookmakers featuring athletes in wagering advertising whether the athletes consent or not.

England's white-ball mentor signed as a Dafabet brand ambassador this week and has told the England and Wales Cricket Board he will not promote betting while on duty, The Guardian reports. The precedent says the deal itself is allowed; the harder questions sit with the advertising rules and with Dafabet's own cricket sponsorships.

PointsBet Holdings says tighter compliance cost it turnover from its highest-value Australian customers, and AFL results went against it as it chased mass-market sports bettors. The six-month loss it now expects is many times the one it reported for the nine months before, and Alberta, the growth market it is counting on, is still not live.

France's gambling regulator has broken its 2025 online sports betting figures down by sport and found growth built on more matches, a 24-hour live offer and operators steering payouts to the 85% cap. The sharper finding is who bets on the obscure end of the menu: mostly players its own algorithm flags as excessive.

Six months after New South Wales revoked the exemptions that let more than 650 pubs and clubs run poker machines through the 4am to 10am shutdown, the regulator has fined two venues and put 70 more under assessment. It has not said how much the fines were, and the government is already reviewing whether six hours is long enough.

Google will let certified online gambling advertisers buy the slot at the top of YouTube's homepage from 21 October, widening a carve-out that has covered only sports betting since 2022. The notice names no markets, and it arrives in a month when European lawmakers are moving to restrict gambling advertising rather than extend it.

The Iris Capital vehicle that took 85.77% of the owner of Cairns' Reef Hotel Casino at A$3.87 a unit is now offering the holdouts A$4.67 and saying it will delist the trust if it can. On the bidder's own share count, one investor with 9.84% decides whether it can force the rest out.

An open letter urges the Northern Territory Government to back an independent's bill that would ban inducements, cap young adults' deposits and lift fines to A$10 million. Because most of Australia's large online bookmakers are licensed in Darwin, the rules would reach punters in every state.

The finance chief who took The Lottery Corporation through its demerger from Tabcorp and raised the debt for its A$1.145 billion Victorian licence extension will leave on 1 July 2027. His successor inherits a job that, since this year's restructure, also covers legal, risk, cyber and technology.

Polymarket has confirmed it is challenging the Dutch gambling regulator's order in court, after being charged for blocking Dutch users a day late. Its case is that event contracts belong with the financial markets supervisor, an argument that, if it won, could land it under the Netherlands' indefinite ban on selling binary options to retail clients.

The Department of Internal Affairs opened bidding on 29 September for the right to apply for one of up to 15 online casino licences, with a reserve price it will never disclose and no idea, it says, of what the auction will raise. Alongside it, a draft testing regime spells out what the winners will have to prove about their games and platforms.

SkyCity Entertainment Group will run a formal, UBS-led sale of SkyCity Adelaide after inquiries from what it calls "credible interested parties", and has hired advisers to engage with suitors for the entire group. The board says a sale is not certain, and that the approaches it has already had undervalue the company.

Crown Resorts says an excess insurer holding half of two layers of its directors' and officers' cover has refused to pay towards the settlement of the class action over its money laundering failures. With A$27.5 million still due to shareholders next May, the claim is about cash as much as principle.

Seven months after buying BMM Testlabs, the New York investment firm Visualize has completed its purchase of eCOGRA, creating a testing and certification group it says holds licences or accreditations in more than 800 jurisdictions. The price of neither deal has been disclosed.

The Apollo-owned slot, systems and fintech supplier has replaced what its chief executive calls a "stuffy" corporate identity with one built around a "casino as a service" pitch. It arrives in the same fortnight as a new finance chief hired to sharpen cash flow.

Long-term unemployed Universal Credit claimants would receive a cut-rate allowance on a prepaid card that cannot be used for betting, alcohol, cigarettes or cash withdrawals. The opposition's plan puts betting on the same list as tobacco and alcohol.

Early this month the chief commissioner told MPs the licence could come back in September. Instead the manager's term has been extended to June 2027, with the NICC citing "serious" new allegations about governance, leadership and culture.