Regulatory
Licensing, compliance, and regulator activity worldwide.
Prime Minister Hun Manet has ordered a nationwide suspension of live online betting operated from casino premises, with licence revocation for anyone who ignores it. Play resumes only once the government has built the legal and digital controls it says are missing, and the order arrives days after the regulator began drafting a suitability test for licence renewals.
The Commercial Gambling Management Commission is building an integrity and quality evaluation framework that would set minimum conditions for holding a casino licence. It follows a year in which the regulator revoked 20 licences and suspended 29 more over links to online scam operations.
Researchers audited every one of the 624 gambling websites licensed in Britain and found dark patterns on 86% of consent banners, no reject option on 24%, and personal data being processed before consent on two-thirds. A second, randomised study then showed the most common banner design measurably pushes people into sharing data they did not want to share.
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.
The government has commissioned a special investigator to map gambling among children and young adults, review operators' marketing on both the licensed and unlicensed markets, and propose new protections, with a report due by 29 February 2028. The health minister says risky gambling among young men has doubled in a few years and one in five is affected.
A Hong Kong default judgment against a Macau high roller cannot be enforced in Singapore because gambling debts offend the country's public policy, the High Court has ruled, even where the gambling was lawful at a licensed casino. The decision unsettles a 2004 precedent and the way Asian casinos extend credit to customers whose assets sit in Singapore.
The province and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations have amended their Gaming Framework Agreement to keep the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority's PlayNow.com as the only legal online operator for another three years, add 49 slot machines to SIGA's allocation and approve a First Nations gaming centre pilot at Flying Dust First Nation.
The Department of Internal Affairs' minimum standards for the licensed online casino market, in force since 8 July, require cryptographically secure random-number generation, continuous monitoring, and a ban on games that adapt their outcomes to a player's results. As the department works towards a licensing auction, the rules put the mathematics behind online pokies on the record.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board used its first meeting after the Ninth Circuit ruling to say sports event contracts are sports bets, full stop. Kalshi's co-founder says the company will keep arguing for a single federal regulator, and New Jersey has now asked the Supreme Court to settle it.
Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez told the president's morning conference that a reform of the Federal Gaming and Raffles Law, unchanged in substance for nearly eight decades, has cleared internal review and goes next to the security cabinet. Its purpose is money laundering and tax fraud in casinos and betting shops, about 20 of which are under investigation.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will use its existing exclusion powers to bar bettors found to have harassed or threatened athletes from every licensed sportsbook and casino in the state. Leagues, players' unions, colleges, venues and athletes themselves can report incidents to a new portal, and the commission's enforcement bureau can subpoena operators to identify anonymous accounts.
More than 1.2 million people, 3% of every active bettor registered with the regulator, have barred themselves from Brazil's licensed betting sites since the central platform opened in December. The figure arrived in a week when the Supreme Court received rival petitions on the betting law and the central bank told banks to stop advertising bets inside their apps.