{"id":27149,"date":"2022-02-10T09:36:19","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T12:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=27149"},"modified":"2026-04-23T11:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:26:24","slug":"acma-fines-au2-5m-sportsbet-for-breaching-australias-spam-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/acma-fines-au2-5m-sportsbet-for-breaching-australias-spam-laws","title":{"rendered":"ACMA fines AU$2.5m Sportsbet for breaching Australia\u2019s spam laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ACMA found that Sportsbet breached spam laws by sending more than 150,000 marketing text messages to over 37,000 consumers who had tried to unsubscribe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Australia.-\u00a0The Australian Communications and Media Authority<\/a>\u00a0(ACMA) has found Sportsbet, Australia\u2019s largest online bookmaker,\u00a0<\/strong>guilty of breaching spam laws. It has fined the bookmaker AU$2.5m (US$1.8m)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the regulator, between January 2020 and March 2021, Sportsbet sent more than 150,000 marketing text messages and emails to over 37,000 consumers who had tried to unsubscribe. The online bookmaker also sent over 3,000 marketing texts that had no unsubscribe function<\/strong>. The messages offered incentives to consumers to place bets or contained alerts about upcoming races.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nerida O\u2019Loughlin<\/strong>, ACMA Chair, said: “We received complaints from people stating they were experiencing gambling-related problems and were trying to manage the issue by unsubscribing from Sportsbet\u2019s promotions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regulator has accepted a comprehensive three-year court-enforceable undertaking from Sportsbet to appoint an independent arbiter to oversee a settlement programme to refund customers who lost money on bets made following the spam messages, which is expected to total around AU$1.2m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The undertaking will also require Sportsbet to appoint an independent consultant to review its procedures, policies, training and systems, and implement recommendations from the audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Loughlin added:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cSportsbet is a large and sophisticated company which should have robust systems in place to comply with spam laws and protect the interests of its customers. We will be actively monitoring Sportsbet\u2019s compliance and the commitments it has made to the ACMA.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ACMA revealed that over the past 18 months,\u00a0businesses have paid nearly AU$3.4m for breaking spam<\/strong>\u00a0and telemarketing laws.\u00a0The regulator has accepted 13 court-enforceable undertakings and issued seven formal\u00a0warnings to businesses<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ACMA found that Sportsbet breached spam laws by sending more than 150,000 marketing text messages to over 37,000 consumers who had tried to unsubscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":17395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has fined Sportsbet AU$2.5m for breaching spam laws, sending over 150,000 marketing messages to 37,000 unsubscribed consumers. This regulatory action includes a court-enforceable undertaking requiring Sportsbet to refund approximately AU$1.2m to affected customers and implement a comprehensive compliance review. The case underscores heightened regulatory scrutiny on marketing practices within the iGaming sector.","focusai_entities":"Sportsbet, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Nerida O\u2019Loughlin","focusai_location":"Australia","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), affiliate_publisher (0.7), product_ux (0.7), tech_data (0.9), marketing_crm (1.0), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.8), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Compliance System Overhaul","query":"What specific enhancements to Sportsbet's CRM and marketing automation systems, alongside internal policy revisions, will be required to ensure robust unsubscribe management and prevent recurrence of spam law breaches?"},{"label":"Regulatory Enforcement Trajectory","query":"How does this ACMA enforcement action, particularly the court-enforceable undertaking, signal a broader regulatory trajectory for digital marketing compliance within the Australian iGaming sector?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,439,158],"tags":[6093,23911,233],"class_list":["post-27149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-legal-news","category-slider-home","tag-acma","tag-gambling-regulation","tag-sports-betting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27181,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27149\/revisions\/27181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}