Australia: all our coverage

The 90-day suspension imposed in December 2022 was due to take effect on 30 September. Queensland has pushed it back a sixth time, citing "significant progress" but unfinished remediation, and kept the special manager in place until the end of March.

The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission says Tabcorp ran its betting accounts for almost five months without the multi-factor authentication its licence required, while attackers drained customer accounts. The regulator also rejected Tabcorp's argument that the rules never required MFA at all.

North Carolina's regulator has fined two operators over self-reported failures: Underdog let 38 under-21s open sportsbook accounts, and bet365 sent a push notification to people on the state's self-exclusion list. Underdog left the market in December, which makes its fine a bill for a business that no longer operates there.

The Queensland Government says the functions of the Queensland Racing Integrity Commission and Racing Queensland will be brought together under one entity, with a new Chief Integrity Officer keeping integrity and animal welfare oversight independent. The 2016 law that created the commission was designed to separate welfare from commerce.

Palmerbet kept a self-excluded customer's account open for 17 months and accepted 312 bets from them in the last three, the Australian Communications and Media Authority found. A week after Dabble paid $1.07 million for similar breaches, Palmerbet has given an 18-month undertaking and paid no penalty.

A consumer-advocate report collects what is publicly known about the national self-exclusion register: awareness at a quarter of adults and a third of bettors, fifteen operators caught breaching it, one of them more than 100,000 times, three financial penalties, and an Entain case the regulator investigated past its own 12-month limit.

The second tranche of the Casino Control (Amendment) Act took effect on 21 September: the GRA can now weigh unethical conduct and systemic control failures when deciding whether Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa remain fit to hold a licence, the two must exchange patron information for financial-crime control, and cashing out a bet after the result is known is a crime.

"Scambling" sites take the deposit, let the balance grow, then demand a fee to release it. Scamwatch logged 806 reports last year, 45% of the losses from First Nations Australians, and the anti-scam centre says the real figure is higher because victims think they lost a bet. AUSTRAC has mapped the money: mule accounts, PayID chains, micro-laundering. From January banks are on the hook.

A University of Toronto and ICES study of 14 years of hospital records finds visits 154% above the expected level among males aged 10 to 29 and 116% above among men aged 30 to 44, with no change in females. The authors call it a caution for Alberta and every province considering private online operators.

The ANJL wants the platforms to run a permanent programme to find, remove, de-index and block the influencers who funnel Brazilians to unlicensed betting sites, and to stop the accounts coming back under new names. It puts the illegal market at 38% to 44%.

The ACMA found the wagering app left 157 BetStop-registered accounts open and sent self-excluded people 839 messages. The penalty is nearly ten times the largest in the regulator's January round, and the law that lands in January raises the ceiling again.

Six years after the Gambling Industry Committee asked for a public health approach to advertising, the Lords Liaison Committee has followed up and found the recommendations "largely unaddressed". Its answer is a ban, and it says the black-market argument against one did not convince it.

A $400m term loan and a $160m delayed draw fund pre-construction on the $4bn Ferry Point project and give the group liquidity, from the private credit firm that also refinanced The Star in June.

Four Northern Territory-licensed businesses sell Australians entries into US Powerball and EuroMillions draws. From 1 January 2027 they cannot, and online keno goes with them. The Lottery Corporation, which backs the change, has put the cost of losing its own online keno business at A$25 million of annual earnings.

A new paper by the former New South Wales regulator Paul Newson argues that Australia's bans on online casino and in-play betting are handing the market to offshore operators, and that the country's illicit tobacco trade shows how quickly practical control is lost. It was prepared for Entain Australia and New Zealand, and it lands as New Zealand prepares to award its first 15 online casino licences.

Mira Mircheva resigned for personal reasons after about eighteen months. George Papanier takes the role on an interim basis for the second time. Bally's meets the Chicago City Council on 9 September to discuss its finances.

NICC chief commissioner Philip Crawford told a parliamentary committee he is satisfied with the Bally's-era management and wants the licence reinstated, conditionally, before he retires in November.

The headline number improved and the underlying business stopped bleeding, but Star's auditors still cannot say it will be able to pay its bills, and a leaked recording of its chief executive has handed the New South Wales regulator a fresh governance problem in the same week.

Parliament cleared the package on 19 August. Wagering ads disappear from live sport, from stadiums and from players' shirts, athletes and influencers can no longer promote betting, and a single national register will let Australians switch the advertising off everywhere at once. It commences on 1 January 2027.

France's state-controlled horseracing monopoly PMU has signed a technology agreement with BetMakers to extend its pool and fixed-odds betting services internationally, a deal that arrives as BetMakers completes its AU$267m acquisition by Tabcorp and builds out a growing roster of global operator partnerships.

Tabcorp has struck a AU$283 million deal to buy cloud-native platform BetMakers, with executives telling analysts it was the cheapest, fastest, and lowest-risk path to modernising a technology estate built on ageing on-premises infrastructure. Annual cost synergies of up to AU$30 million are projected within two years.

Tabcorp has signed a binding scheme of arrangement for the wagering technology group it walked away from in February, and it is paying a 41% premium to get it. The price of the delay is written into the terms.

The media regulator has asked internet providers to block a further 12 offshore gambling and affiliate sites, two of them impersonating licensed Australian brands. The action lifts the running total to 1,751 sites blocked since 2019.

Ryan Comstock has the top job at Ainsworth on a permanent basis. He inherits a business navigating a contested ownership structure, a mixed financial performance and intense pressure from competing major shareholders.