ACMA attacks black market betting operators in Australia

ACMA attacks black market betting operators in Australia

Added:
ACMA attacks black market betting operators in Australia

The ACMA (or Australian Communications and Media Authority) has revealed its intention to ask the country’s Internet Service Providers to get rid of 18 offshore black market betting sites. The ACMA said in an official statement that there were about 222 illegal operators in Australia that had already been removed ever since it first filed a request for their removal back in November of 2012.

These 18 websites included 7 Bit Casino, Golden Star Casino, iLucki, Loki Casino, Joo Casino, Wild Card City, Syndicate Casino and many others…

In the meantime, there have been more than 100 black market services in the Aussie market that have willingly withdrawn ever since the ACMA imposed its updated illegal offshore gambling regulations back in 2017.

The ACMA has described website blocking as ‘one of a range of enforcement options’ to protect the country’s public from unscrupulous operators’, as well as stating that it is ‘a valuable opportunity to alert the public to illegal gambling services through the messaging that appears when there is an attempt to access the site’.

Through the Telecommunications Act 1997, the authority is able to ask the ISP to omit any gambling site if it displays violations of the following:

  • Supplying illegal interactive gambling services to customers in the country (including online casinos, online slot machines and services that provide in-play online sports betting).
  • Supplying an unlicensed regulated interactive gambling service to customers in Australia (such as online betting services that don’t have a valid Australian licence).
  • Publishing advertisements for illegal interactive gambling services or unlicensed regulated interactive gambling services within the Australian territory.

This latest request comes just in time as the United Kingdom’s Betting and Gaming Council as well as their operators are in the midst of a debate with the UKGC concerning the abundance of black market operators within the territory.

In a recent report conducted by the PWC, it was revealed that despite the fact that 4.5 million online gamblers in the country were aware of the presence on black market websites, the number of those using such services went up to 460,000 from 210,000 in just a year.

Despite that, the gambling reformers have spoken out on this issue as Neil McArthur, the UKGC Chief Executive, stated that the report was actually ‘exaggerated’ and ‘not consistent with the intelligence picture’.

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