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Sydney-based online wagering company PlayUp Interactive has been fined a record A$586,000 ($394,000) over gambling advertising in New South Wales (NSW) state, seemingly marking a tougher approach in punishing corporate bookmakers.
PlayUp Interactive was found guilty on each of 33 counts of “publishing advertisements which included inducements to participate, or to participate frequently, in gambling activity … as well as an inducement to open a betting account”, NSW online gambling regulator Liquor & Gaming NSW said in a statement on Tuesday (August 20).
The company, trading as Draftstars, faced a maximum penalty of A$110,000 per count for running the ads, which appeared on the Draftstars website on or around March 15 and March 24, 2022, according to a Liquor & Gaming NSW statement of facts seen by Vixio GamblingCompliance.
On the first date, Draftstars offered free or bonus bets in two instances, while on the second, Draftstars ran ads for 31 free contest entries for various sports with a prize pool of A$5, with the offers visible to non-betting account holders in all cases, the statement said.
Even without receiving the maximum fine for all counts, the penalty is by far the largest Liquor & Gaming NSW has secured from the courts in dozens of prosecutions of illegal gambling ads.
Dimitri Argeres, Liquor & Gaming NSW’s director of compliance and enforcement, said the regulator “will continue to take a zero-tolerance approach to these offences".
“And this sentence shows that strong penalties can apply.”
Argeres’ comment was low-key given the dramatic increase in the size of the fine, the fact that online betting operators are “well aware” of bans on inducements, and following years of court penalties in the mere tens of thousands of dollars, including for multiple offender companies.
Still, the outcome is consistent with the shifting agenda of a regulator whose executive director of operations and enforcement, Jane Lin, complained earlier this year that lenient courts had sidestepped larger penalties.
Lin told the Regulating the Game conference in Sydney in March that her organisation’s shift in regulatory tactics, contained in new internal guidelines, was being held back in part until the national government responded to a federal parliamentary committee report that unanimously backed a ban on online gambling advertising.
That response, according to media leaks, appears set to back away from a full ban on mass media advertising for sports betting, although rumblings among federal government backbenchers and influential former politicians may yet affect the final decision.
In the meantime, Liquor & Gaming NSW has been using its authority to issue A$15,000 penalty infringement notices to corporate bookmakers to compensate for softer court penalties and “to signal our disapproval of behaviour”, Lin said.
PlayUp Interactive was previously fined A$7,500 in NSW in April 2019 for communicating illegal gambling inducements to a former customer.
The company was also fined almost A$27,000 in July 2023 and just over A$8,000 in May 2022 in the Northern Territory, its licensing home, for failing to prevent self-excluding customers from opening new betting accounts.
The Northern Territory Racing Commission also fined PlayUp Interactive more than A$13,000 in March 2022 for failing to recognise problem gambling behaviour in one of its customers.
