One of Australia’s biggest gambling and wagering operators, Tabcorp, has incurred a $2.7 million penalty for widespread violations of the country’s spam and telemarketing consumer protection laws, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has confirmed.
The federal regulator’s investigation uncovered a pattern of non-compliant marketing activity spanning from February 2024 through mid-2025, targeted specifically at the company’s high-value VIP customer base. ACMA’s findings show Tabcorp placed nearly 4,000 unsolicited marketing calls to these customers that failed to meet basic disclosure requirements, with no clear statement of the company’s identity or the promotional purpose of the call. Of those unauthorized calls, 351 went to numbers registered on the national Do Not Call Register, and an additional 82 were placed outside of legally permitted calling hours.
In a separate 16-day period in 2025, the company also sent more than 217,000 unsolicited marketing emails and text messages to customers who had already explicitly unsubscribed from Tabcorp’s marketing communications. This marks the second major penalty imposed on the wagering giant in 2025: just months earlier in June, Tabcorp was ordered to pay more than $4 million in fines for separate violations involving non-compliant marketing messages sent to VIP clients.
ACMA’s investigation into the earlier case found that between February and May 2024, Tabcorp sent nearly 2,600 SMS and WhatsApp marketing messages that failed to include a required unsubscribe option. More than 3,100 additional messages during that same period lacked clear, accurate sender identification, and 11 messages were sent to customers who had never given consent to receive marketing communications.
ACMA board member Samantha Yorke emphasized that the company’s conduct is unacceptable, particularly given the well-documented harms linked to excessive gambling marketing. “When people join the Do Not Call Register or unsubscribe from marketing messages, they are making a clear choice that must be respected,” Yorke explained. “This is especially critical given the heightened risks of financial loss and psychological harm that come from unregulated gambling marketing. The scale and range of these breaches point to serious, systemic weaknesses in Tabcorp’s compliance systems.”
When determining the size of the most recent penalty, ACMA did take into account mitigating factors: the company self-reported the latest violations, the non-compliant activity was limited to a 16-day window, and the customers affected had only withdrawn consent for marketing through one specific channel, not all communications.
In a formal statement provided to NewsWire, a Tabcorp spokesperson acknowledged the regulator’s findings and committed to improving the company’s compliance framework. “We’re committed to being a compliant company and commenced a whole business transformation under new leadership at the end of 2024,” the spokesperson said. “Tabcorp assisted the ACMA throughout the investigation and will continue to work closely with all regulators as we continue our transformation.”