The Australian Communications and Media Authority has imposed AU$2.7 million in penalties on Tabcorp Holdings Limited after finding the wagering operator breached the country’s spam and telemarketing laws across a series of violations spanning February 2024 to mid-2025.
ACMA’s investigation found that Tabcorp made 351 telemarketing calls to customers whose numbers were listed on the Do Not Call Register without consent, placed 82 marketing calls outside permitted calling hours, and made nearly 4,000 calls without properly identifying the company or the purpose of the call. Separately, over a 16-day period in 2025, Tabcorp sent more than 217,000 marketing emails and SMS messages to customers who had unsubscribed from receiving marketing communications through specific channels.
Tabcorp self-reported the email and SMS breaches to the regulator. ACMA said it took into account the voluntary disclosure, the relatively short 16-day window for the spam violations, and the fact that affected customers had opted out of marketing through specific channels rather than all communications when calculating the penalty.
Repeat Enforcement and Undertakings
The action marks the second time ACMA has penalised Tabcorp for spam-related conduct. In 2024, the operator was ordered to pay more than AU$4 million after sending non-compliant SMS and WhatsApp marketing messages to VIP customers – a case that drew scrutiny given the potential for harm in targeting high-value bettors with unsolicited communications.
In addition to the financial penalty, Tabcorp has entered into a court-enforceable undertaking requiring it to commission an independent review of its telemarketing systems, implement any recommended improvements, and submit regular compliance reports to ACMA. That undertaking runs alongside a separate spam compliance undertaking already in force from the 2024 action, leaving the operator under dual layers of regulatory monitoring.
ACMA Chief AI Officer Samantha Yorke said the volume and variety of the breaches pointed to significant shortcomings in Tabcorp’s compliance systems. Yorke said that when people join the Do Not Call Register or unsubscribe from marketing messages, they are making a clear choice that must be respected – particularly given the heightened risks of financial loss and psychological harm associated with gambling marketing. She warned the regulator would closely monitor Tabcorp’s remediation efforts.
The Tabcorp penalty is part of a broader ACMA enforcement campaign that has seen Australian businesses pay more than AU$12 million in combined penalties for spam and telemarketing violations over the past 18 months. The broader Australian regulatory environment for wagering operators has tightened considerably, with multiple agencies increasing enforcement activity around consumer protection obligations.
For Tabcorp, the dual undertakings and repeat-penalty status create a compliance baseline that will be difficult to walk back from. Any further breach in either telemarketing or spam practices would land in front of a regulator that has already documented systemic consent-management failures twice – a context that meaningfully raises the stakes for the next compliance cycle.
Source: AGBrief
Petra Vanhoof has spent the better part of a decade following the shifting tides of gambling regulation across Europe and beyond. She came up through the compliance side of the industry before pivoting to writing, which gives her a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on the rules, loopholes, and political maneuvering that shape how operators actually do business. She is particularly drawn to the gap between what regulators say and what the market ends up doing in response.