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Victoria state’s gambling regulator has slapped wagering giant Tabcorp Holdings with a A$4.6m ($3.1m) fine over systematic compliance breaches, a state record for the company, as well as letters of censure and an operational overhaul order.
Australian gambling regulators are ramping penalties for indifferent operators in the nation’s gambling industry as official patience wears thin over repeat offenders at state and federal levels.
Just days after New South Wales state’s online gambling regulator issued a record fine over advertising breaches, the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission (VGCCC) on Friday (August 23) issued its largest non-casino fine to Tabcorp, the nation’s largest gambling company.
The VGCCC said in a statement that the company’s Victorian subsidiary Tabcorp Wagering breached the state’s code of conduct for wagering, betting licences and responsible gambling “repeatedly” between August 2020 and February 2023.
“Tabcorp’s breaches reflect systemic operational deficiencies and non-compliance with the conditions of its licence, the consequences of which have included significant harm to a customer,” VGCCC chair Fran Thorn said.
“The hefty fine, the largest the Commission has ever issued to Tabcorp, is proportionate to the seriousness of the licensee’s misconduct,” she said.
“It sends a clear message to the gambling industry that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.”
Thorn told the ABC news network on Friday that the maximum possible fine for Tabcorp’s offences was A$9.1m.
In addition to the fine, Tabcorp has been ordered to execute a “transformation program to overhaul its operations”, the statement said, covering harm minimisation, code of conduct compliance and obligations relating to its retail agent network.
“We will be actively monitoring to ensure that the transformation program requirements are not only implemented quickly but are effective in ensuring ongoing compliance with the law,” Thorn said.
VGCCC investigators found that Tabcorp repeatedly sent direct marketing material to a gambler who had “opted out” of receiving such material, failed to provide employee training that minimised gambling harm from its products and services, and failed to support a customer “exhibiting observable signs of distress or indicators of potential gambling harm”.
They found that one of the customers, whose aberrant betting patterns were known to Tabcorp, received a A$2,000 deposit match promotion instead of due care during a “responsible gambling call”, the statement said.
“This action is indicative of a culture in which the licence holder’s harm minimisation obligations were not taken seriously,” Thorn said.
The VGCCC also issued Tabcorp with three letters of censure over less serious breaches:
- Failing to include an opt-out link in gambling SMS text messages.
- Failing to obtain approval for 985 firewall rules in use since 2015.
- Sending marketing materials on 153 occasions to customers who did not wish to receive them.
Similarly, the VGCCC issued two letters of censure to Tabcorp in November 2023 for using unapproved software in its wagering and betting system.
The VGCCC’s actions against Tabcorp point to dwindling patience within the nation’s most aggressive gambling regulator with Australia’s land-based wagering monopoly.
They follow substantial VGCCC fines of A$1m and more than A$370,000 against Tabcorp for, respectively, defying regulator instructions over a data centre outage in 2020 in Sydney, and failing to prevent serial underage gambling at its Melbourne betting terminals in 2022 and 2023.
VGCCC irritation over Tabcorp non-compliance led to a January 2024 directive that requires the state’s gambling outlets to accept cash bets only if gamblers are playing within five metres, and in the line of sight, of the counter.
Gambling outside these conditions now requires counter vouchers and personal identification if the customer is or appears to be under the age of 25.
Tabcorp was also ordered to implement a “mystery shopper” program in which company-hired confederates posing as customers test compliance responses at a sampling of retail outlets.
Also hanging over Tabcorp’s diminished reputation in Victoria is an incident in which former CEO Adam Rytenskild made a sexual remark about VGCCC chief executive Annette Kimmitt ahead of the renewal of Tabcorp's retail monopoly in the state.
The Tabcorp board forced Rytenskild out in March 2024 after an independent probe.
Vixio GamblingCompliance understands that Rytenskild is yet to personally apologise to Kimmitt, who is not a VGCCC commissioner and so does not take part in disciplinary proceedings.
Tabcorp was previously fined A$45m, a sum reportedly matched by legal fees, by the national financial transactions regulator AUSTRAC in 2017.
Tabcorp did not respond to a Vixio request for comment by the time of publication.
