recent reports based on consumer credit data showing a surge in gambling spending<\/strong><\/em><\/a> during lockdown, the body says most of the increase has been through illegal offshore gaming sites, with growth on legal gambling platforms being much more moderate.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRWA CEO, Brent Jackson said in a press release on Tuesday: \u201cHistorical consumer credit data is being used to create alarmist reports that gambling has surged during the COVID crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said growth on legal platforms had been a \u201cnormal market response\u201d to changes in conditions under the health crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Online casinos and pokies were operating against Australian law, Jackson said, but while it is illegal to offer the products, it is no illegal to access them from Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added: \u201cOur concern is that a lot of the growth in online gambling has gone to unlicensed overseas betting websites that offer no consumer protections at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The growth of smartphones combined with the high number of illegal overseas gambling websites targeting Australians 24\/7 means that many people are walking around with an unlicensed casino in their pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The RWA has warned that the surge in gambling spending during the Covid-19 crisis was fuelled by illegal websites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA) asserts that the reported surge in Australian gambling expenditure during the COVID-19 pandemic was predominantly channeled through illegal offshore gaming sites. The body highlights that growth on regulated platforms was moderate, emphasizing the lack of consumer protections and regulatory oversight on unlicensed overseas operations. RWA CEO Brent Jackson warns of the pervasive threat posed by these accessible, unregulated platforms.","focusai_entities":"Responsible Wagering Australia, RWA, Brent Jackson","focusai_location":"Australia","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (1.0), payments_fraud_aml (0.8), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Regulatory Efficacy?","query":"What specific regulatory and enforcement measures are being considered to curb the proliferation and accessibility of illegal offshore gambling operators targeting the Australian market?"},{"label":"Market Share Impact?","query":"How does the RWA quantify the market share attributed to illegal operators, and what is the estimated financial impact on licensed Australian wagering entities' GGR and NGR?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,153],"tags":[289,20326,4138],"class_list":["post-8308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-igaming-news","tag-australia","tag-illegal-gambling","tag-online-gambling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8313,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308\/revisions\/8313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}