Australians seek online casinos during shutdown
Steep increase in internet searches for “online pokies” and the phrase “online casino Australia real money.”
Australia.- Despite federal government attempts to block unlicensed online gambling sites, Australia has seen a surge in internet searches for illegal offshore casinos during the coronavirus lockdown.
The Internet traffic analytics platform SEMrush has said that web searches for “online pokies” in rose from 12,000 in February 2020 to 40,500 in April 2020.
Online searches for the phrase “online casino Australia real money” increased by 540 per cent, and there was a ten-fold increase in searches for “Australian online casino reviews.”
It also detected an increase in traffic, with JokaRoom seeing a 100 increase in visits, from 606,407 visits in February to 1.2 million in April.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to 52 illegal online casinos since November last year.
