Tabcorp hit with a small AU$15,000 fine in NSW

Tabcorp has been the subject of another small fine in New South Wales, with the operator ordered to pay AU$15,000 an incident including the inadvertent display of an advertisement on the operator’s website which contained an invitation to participate in real money gambling contests.

The bonus offer could be seen by both registered and non-registered consumers, and Australian and NSW laws are very strict about bonus inducements which are prohibited in all of their forms in Australia. As a result, Tabcorp was found to be in breach of existing NSW state laws. A public statement released by the NSW Liquor & Gaming read:

"Tabcorp is a large corporation and it is our expectation that an operator of this scale has strong internal controls and demonstrates greater vigilance to prevent members of the public being exposed to gambling inducements."

The regulator and its executive director, Jane Lin explained that there were cases when promotions could be offered legally but this only concerned account holders who had consented to receive such messages in the first place, and already had existing accounts.

However, operators are not allowed to offer odds boosters or other promos designed to entice and elicit more bets to be placed from consumers. The NSW is also very strict about promotions that invite people to register accounts or refer friends. A maximum penalty of AU$100,000 may be applied to companies that breach these regulatory measures.

In this case, the NSW Liquor & Gaming has deemed AU$15,000 to be a suitable penalty to be paid by Tabcorp which cooperated with the regulator and assured that no further instances of such promotional displays will take place on its website.

Tabcorp has faced another recent fine worth AU$1m which was attributed to the operator over an outage of its Wagering and Betting System in the state of Victoria back in 2020. The local regulator deemed it appropriate to ask Tabcorp to pay the aforementioned amount – a rather hefty penalty all things considered.

NSW has also recently decided to allocate AU$100m of a penalty it awarded to a local casino towards responsible gambling research and the overall protection of consumers. The funds will be allocated over a period of several years and at different tranches.

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