Australia’s communications regulator has fined Tabcorp A$158,400 after finding the operator accepted online in-play bets that are prohibited under federal rules.
Tabcorp said it voided the affected bets and refunded customers, but the regulator treated the issue as a systems and controls failure, not a one-time slip.
What ACMA says happened
ACMA said its investigation found Tabcorp accepted 426 in-play bets across 32 tennis matches between February 2024 and June 2025.
In Australia, online in-play betting is heavily restricted under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, which is why live wagering is typically routed through approved channels rather than standard click-to-bet flows.
Third-party providers do not carry the liability
ACMA’s summary of Tabcorp’s explanation pointed to issues with a third-party provider involved in closing markets. The regulator’s response was blunt: outsourcing does not change legal responsibility, and operators are expected to detect and fix problems faster than this one was addressed.
The case also matters because ACMA described it as the third in-play betting breach for Tabcorp since 2021, which increases the pressure to show that governance has improved, not just the specific market-closure logic.
Why the enforcement mix is a warning to the market
Alongside the penalty, ACMA said Tabcorp entered an enforceable undertaking tied to reviewing systems and reporting back, and it warned further non-compliance could escalate to Federal Court action.
For other operators, the message is that “market suspension tooling” is now a compliance priority, especially in fast-moving sports where one failure can multiply into hundreds of prohibited bets quickly.
