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In New South Wales in Australia, casino operators agree to face the sanctions of Liquor & Gaming NSW instead of following the rules imposed on them. For some people (including university professor Charles Livington), this is due to the low amounts of fines imposed by the courts.

Lawless casinos

In Australia’s New South Wales, casino operators are breaking the new rules. These new rules, in force for a few months, require operators to abstain completely from advertisements promising free betting games. In other words, the law prohibits advertisements that present the possibility of playing games of chance without spending a penny.

The law in question was adopted in July 2018. It warns casino operators against any incentive to play promising free bets to players, and which aim to attract potential players. All games are affected except race bets.

What online casinos did was attract players by promising them free bets, provided they register on their site. This is what Australian regulators have noticed. They have therefore recorded numerous offenses from certain online casinos. They also noted that some of the companies that were observed were using third-party sites to carry out their illegal promotions. Investigations have even shown that the Apple Store is the primary vector for this specific scenario.

In pursuit of their desire for justice, regulators have launched an average of two lawsuits against casinos each month since the new laws came into effect.

But, before taking action, the “Liquor & Gaming NSW”, the local regulator of the gambling market has issued warnings. She informed the casino operators that fines of $ 38,235 will be imposed on each operator whose violations are found after investigation. It also took care to issue formal notices, in order to allow operators in legal indelicacy to comply with the requirements of responsible gaming.

Sanctions whose effectiveness is not unanimous

The warnings of Australian regulator Liquor & Gaming NSW went unheeded, as most crooked operators were subsequently fined. These are the operators bet365, Sportsbet, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and Points Bet among others. Since July 2018, justice has sentenced these criminal operators to fines of nearly 91,763 US dollars, in addition to legal costs of 127,911 US dollars.

Although these actions are likely to reduce the number of offenses, some individuals believe that this measure is not effective. Thus Professor Charles Livingstone, associate of the University of Monash, thinks that these fines do not represent much for these casino operators, since they rake in colossal profits. He believes that these companies estimate the costs of advertising and the penalties negligible in the face of the enormous revenues that these advertisements can generate. For him, crooked operators will continue their dirty work as long as the regulator does not have the capacity and even the will to suspend or cancel the licenses it has issued.

Professor C. Livingstone also notes the difficulty encountered by justice, given that most of the crooked operators are based in the State of the Northern Territory. He thus concludes that the fight would be more effective if one implemented federal laws valid for all the territories of Australia.

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