The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued an AUD$262,920 (approx. €161,778) fine to Tabcorp for breaching rules on in-play betting.
The regulator found during an investigation that Tabcorp had accepted 854 online in-play bets on 69 tennis matches between April and October 2023.
It is illegal for an operator to accept this kind of wager under Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act 2001.
In response to the ACMA’s findings, Tabcorp said that the breaches resulted from a technical bug within its systems. The first of these errors occurred in April 2023 but was not fixed until October.
The operator also stated that it voided all bets made because of the error, which meant that customers did not suffer any losses, nor did it profit from the glitch in the system.
Despite this reasoning, the regulator issued the fine as Tabcorp had been warned previously over in-play betting breaches in November 2021.
That incident involved the operator accepting in-play bets on a US college basketball game.
In a statement released by the ACMA, ACMA member Carolyn Lidgerwood expressed her concern about how long it took Tabcorp to fix the error that allowed in-play betting.
“In-play betting increases access to gambling opportunities and exacerbates the risks of gambling harm, as people can place bets with high frequency on multiple outcomes during sporting events,” she said.
“There has been significant growth in online sports betting in recent years. It’s important all online wagering services have systems in place so that illegal in-play bets are not accepted.
“Tabcorp is a major wagering operator and it is concerning that it took some six months for the system error to be identified and fixed.”
Shares in Tabcorp Holdings Ltd (ASX:TAH) gained 3.13 per cent to close at AUD$0.50 per share in Sydney Thursday.