The independent Member of Parliament Andrew Wilkie has called for the competent authorities that they should adopt higher fines for sports betting operators that violate their licence conditions. According to him, the fines are currently so low that they actually sent the wrong message to the local gambling sector which is worth about AU$50 billion.
As Casino Guardian already reported, Ladbrokes recently suffered a monetary penalty of almost AU$80,000 for its failure to limit damages caused by a problem gambler who stole millions of dollars from his clients and friends to fuel his gambling addiction. The company has not returned the money lost by the compulsive gambler to the victims of his crimes.
The body that regulates almost the entire online gambling sector of Australia – the Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC) – found that the gambling operator failed to hold an inquiry into the gambler’s source of funds to check whether he was able to afford to make such large deposits over a period of almost two years. Even worse, Ladbrokes was found to have offered various incentives to the individual in order to make him register an account with the company.
The AU$78,540 fine faced by Ladbrokes is the latest one in a series of relatively small monetary penalties, especially when compared with the gambling revenue generated by the sector. In February 2023, BetNation faced an AU$13,770 fine for targeting hundreds of self-excluded gamblers with a promotional offer. Another company – News Corp-backed Betr – was handed a monetary penalty worth AU$77,000 for getting in contact with a person who had been listed on the self-exclusion register and calling for him to open an account with the operator.
Now, Andrew Wilkie MP welcomed the regulatory action taken against Ladbrokes and the rest of the companies on the country’s gambling market but shared that the fines imposed on them were largely ineffective because they were too small in comparison with the companies’ “margin of error”. According to him, such fines were unlikely to prevent future misconduct in the industry.
Gambling Companies Need to Face Bigger Fines for Their Wrongdoings, Wilkie MP Says
According to independent Member of Parliament Mr Wilkie, small fines were arguably worse than no fine at all because they sent all the wrong signals to the companies about what measures they could expect whenever they breached the laws or their licence conditions. The long-time anti-gambling advocate believes that fines should represent an amount that is big enough to financially hurt the company in a way that would make them think twice whether they could afford to make another step out of line.
As previously reported by Entain – the Isle of Man-based company that owns Ladbrokes – its gaming revenue in Australia rose to a record high of AU$304 million in six months. According to official reports, gambling companies licensed in the Northern Territory now generate a collective annual turnover worth AU$48.3 billion – a result that represents a massive increase in comparison to the ones registered only a decade earlier (AU$5.7 billion).
The thing is that the Northern Territory Racing Commission handed Ladbrokes the maximum penalty allowed by the state’s gambling laws. Its chair, Alastair Shields, also recently confessed that the fines’ amount was actually an issue, saying that he would back the implementation of stricter rules by the Government of the Northern Territory. The ongoing Government review of new gambling legislation has been underway for half a decade already.
The director of policy and campaigns at the peak body for financial counsellors in the country – Financial Counselling Australia – noted that the NTRC may have been able to implement higher fines in case it chose a different approach when categorising gambling companies’ violations. He noted that the gambling regulator had not provided an explanation why it is treating multiple violations of gambling companies such as Ladbrokes as a single breach and suggested that such violations should be fined individually with much higher fines.
- Author
Daniel Williams
