PlayUp slapped with $400K fine in New South Wales

The government of New South Wales has looked askance at PlayUp Interactive, a betting and gaming company, which has now been fined $400,000 (AU$586,000) over several cited failures. This penalty is already higher than what Betr had to pay last year, when the company was fined $140,000 (AU$210,000), and it demonstrates a readiness by regulators to ratchet up the size of penalties they mete out.

Regulator and the court side against PlayUp

The company, which runs the Draftstars business, has been issued the six-figure penalty by a local court, and it has to do with an investigation launched by the state regulator, Liquor and Gaming NSW, which established 33 instances of illegal advertisements on the company’s website.

According to the court, the company was found guilty of offering players various inducements directly on its websites. Such inducements incentivizing players to play are only allowed in those cases where players have opted into them manually, but the court argues that the advertisements were indiscriminate.

In other words, the ads could be seen by people who had not explicitly opted into ads or had registered accounts, as confirmed by Liquor and Gaming NSW Director of Compliance Enforcement Dimitri Argeres:

"NSW bans the advertisement of any offer of an inducement to participate in a gambling activity, including an inducement to bet more frequently, to persons who do not hold a betting account with the betting operator."

The letter of the law means zero tolerance

Argeres explained that PlayUp Interactive and other companies have the option to advertise their products in numerous ways, but that they were not allowed to offer players "enhanced or increased odds" to incentivize players into betting more.

Overall, betting services must ensure that their advertisement standards meet regulatory norms and ensure that they look out for the customer first, as responsible gambling has become an operational byword for all businesses and regulators in the country.

Argeres has said that he would push for a zero-tolerance policy against offending companies, with online betting operators yet to incur even heftier fines should they end up flouting existing gambling rules and breach protocol.

In the meantime, there have been increased calls of support for a complete ban on gambling ads and counter-proposals to raise a new 2% levy on gambling companies' revenues.

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