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Sportsbet.com.au to pay $3.7m in fines and penalties for sending 150,000 unwanted gambling advertising and gambling as well. Apparently sportsbet would have to pay fines since they were sending those messages to people who were trying to unsubscribe to them. At the same time they are not only gonna pay the biggest fine according to Australian spam laws they are also going to pay to individual customers.

 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/10/sportsbet-to-pay-37m-in-fines-and-penalties-for-sending-150000-unwanted-gambling-ad-messages (https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/10/sportsbet-to-pay-37m-in-fines-and-penalties-for-sending-150000-unwanted-gambling-ad-messages)

Financial counsellors are also implying that they should put a whole ban on the gambling advertising. The company also was contacted by acma but they apparently continued to do it.

What do you think 💬?
I think it's really irresponsible thing to do.

               Important Information:- ℹ️
(Thread for sportsbet.com.au not sportsbet.io )

{I do understand the fact that there are many gambling sites usually that we see upfront using the same name sometimes therefore extremely sorry for the confusion that might have been caused. }

if this is true, then It is an extremely irresponsible thing to do. they are professionals(at least I'd like to think so) and have been running their gambling site for a while now and they should know that sending advertisement emails to people who tried to unsubscribe to them can/will have consequences. I have nothing against sportsbet but I am glad they are going to be held accountable. I hope they'll take this incident as a lesson and be better next time.

anyway, you should fix the link. the link redirects me to an image instead of the article.

It's worth noting that this fine is issued to Sportsbet.com.au and NOT the Sportsbet.io cryptocurrency casino that is a regular participant at these forums. They are two distinct entities and direct competitors. Besides that, it is a fairly common occurrence to see these fines going out and it makes you wonder if the penalties are high enough. Let's hope that the multiplier goes up for each time a company is found guilty of breaking such laws so that eventually they will take the proper care or maybe even be pushed into bankruptcy if they abuse their marketing position. Unfortunately in these type of events, where they stand to make huge profits, you have to assume that every act is malicious instead of defaulting to the argument that it is accidental.

It looks like a lot of gambling platforms are incurring fines and violations in terms of advertising. I have unsubscribed to lots of advertisements from online casinos and some still went through, and end up in my spam folder. As someone who tries to limit their gambling habits on a select few platforms, and have purposely blocked all promotions and newsletters from other platforms, this is simply unacceptable since they are trying to entice me and tempt me to come and play to them once more. What if I'm a problematic gambler who wishes to change my ways? I'll be back at square 1 and it's all going to be downhill from there, again.

Interesting, another case of unwanted email that results in a serious nudge on the head. I wonder if this would be the same if the company in question would not be as related to an activity that is always under particular scrutiny and has bad press by default with many people speaking about unwanted effects rather than the jobs and economy that it generates. Seems quite unfair compared to other business.

There is a big difference between the two parties. Those companies have nothing to do with each other, do they? Then sportsbets.io does not have to worry at all. The amount of the fine surprises me enormously, I have rarely seen such high fines. Most often, fines in the gambling industry come up when a company offers gambling to players from a country where it is illegal.

Wondering if Stake would be the next one to have this kind of problem on which they would be penalized as i have seen some similar issues on them.

I wasnt expecting that Sportsbet do make the same thing on sending out promotional or advertising emails to those who unsubscribe which i could say that it is very unethical for
a platform to do so.

They are really not following into  those features on the first place and doesnt really let go to those gamblers who do tend to get out on gambling addiction.

Nice that  a spam law actually can make a company liable to the violation they did. Upon reading, this is not the sportsbet.io we all trusted. Australia seem trying to tighten. Government normally doesnt care about spam.

I just hope this spam law applies to all companies sending emails we didnt even register nor subscribed.

It has already been mentioned in this thread by Fortify that this is NOT about the trusted Sportsbet.io who are represented here on the forum, that everyone loves so much.  

The company being fined is www.sportsbet.com.au & not www.sportsbet.io

OP should really have been more clear about which entity this thread is about.

For anyone trying to shit post & spam to fill their signature campaign quota, reconsider doing so because you’re barking up the wrong tree.

It is really just right for them to a bit tighten and i dont really see this as a bad thing about these spam law which it should really be applied in all industries which this could really get rid of those unwanted emails about promotions and stuffs that we dont really need.On the time  that we do unsubscribe then it is really just right that those companies or platforms should stop on sending those craps out and its true that
government doesnt really care this much in the past on which these things are confidently continuing to do despite of exclusions or unsubscribing since they do know the couldnt be sued out
but now times changed and we are seeing these things to happen.

It's a big concern these days the number of unwanted and unsolicited advertisement we get on our mobile phones. I'm even more concerned for the young and desperate who through these advertisement may decide to try out gambling as a means to make money without knowledge that there is a high potential for it to become a damaging habit to the future.  These sort of advertising from gambling platform creates am image of them being desperate IMO, and a desperate company does not care about limits, which is bad. This fine for unwanted advertising is a step in the right direction, other gambling platforms should take cue.

If they did this then it is incredibly irresponsible on their part, after all it makes sense they can send emails to their customers if they have decided to subscribe to their newsletter, however if they have opted out of this then they need to respect that decision, now if we were talking about an isolated case here and there then we could make the argument it was just a mistake and let it slide, but we are talking about 150k messages, that is not something that can be ignored as the number is simply too big to think this was a simple mistake and not an official policy on their part.

Thanks for the clear up.I had directly presumed out that it was Sportsbet.io but it isnt.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/10/sportsbet-to-pay-37m-in-fines-and-penalties-for-sending-150000-unwanted-gambling-ad-messages
So this do talks about Sportsbet.com.au which people shouldnt really believe that this is talking about sportsbet that we know on this market.
Thanks for the clarification.

I think I've read something like this before but the difference is that it's sending emails to those troubled gamblers who wants to stop receiving or wanted to be banned from their website yet they accidentally/intentionally send an email message to these kind of people.

Thank you for the clarification about this matter, I almost thought that it was the regular one that has been in around to this forum. I never knew they have had a competitor who has almost the same website name but it's a bit different in their domain name.

Anyway, I think they deserve to pay the fine though since they pushed too much their marketing strategy that it actually cause some trouble specially to the troubled one who suffered too much from gambling. I think they aren't seriously following the law but instead they pushed to do such act despite of the warning by their government.

If the case is about with these customers that have unsubscribed already to them and they're still spamming them with their ads. I think it's lawful that they should know that these people have tried to avoid them yet, they still insist of sending them those ads.

It's now the authorities that have stepped on it. Someone really got pissed off with those ads and probably have lost thousands already and yet they won't stop.

Ig it was a mistake on their side, or the system rather? It should be rather obvious that sending advertisements to unsubscribed users shouldn't be done. Especially since they're running a gambling casino, which could make a lot of issues depending on how the status is reported. I don't think it's something new, but it is something I don't often see since most casinos tend to actually take this issue with quite the careful stance afaik.

That, I don't think would actually happen. I guess there'd be more strict regulations for casinos to comply, but complete ban? Nope.

thanks for clearing that up. the article never mentioned that it was sportsbet.com.au so I assumed it was sportsbet.io since it was the only bookie I know of that is named sportsbet. anyway, my comment would still be the same. they are professionals and made an irresponsible move and I am glad they are being held accountable for it.

I am really amazed at how the government acted on this. I can only wish that spam laws across the world are as strictly implemented as the spam laws in Australia. I am not only awed by the fact that the spam laws in the country are actively and strictly implemented, I am also quite surprised at the enormity of the penalty.

Truth be told, my email is pestered with spam messages. I don't even know how I ended up receiving many of them. Even my phone is also receiving spam texts every now and then. I don't know if my country has spam laws. If there are, they're surely not implemented.

Their act really deserves to be fined simply because they're causing disturbance to their customers who already unsubscribed to them. There are still lots of other gambling sites that advertise this way which I think also need to penalize. Gamblers are actually unsubscribing to get rid of gambling so they should be responsible for spamming their customers with too many advertisements.

The article is interesting but yeah it's not redirecting to the article, but back on the post that's a bad way to advertise, gambling advertisements through emails should be targeted and people are opted to subscribed to receive newsletters, bonuses, and giveaways, this is gambling once a non gamblers receive such email campaign it will be reported and the email provider will ban their emails, the huge fine is enough lesson for them to do better.

if someone is not clear then I include a little link = sportsbet.com.au (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsbet) different from sportsbet.io (https://yolo.io/team/tim-heath/)

sportsbet.com.au comes from australia, while sportsbet.io from estonia

I think if there is a system of fines on their gambling platforms to get rid of the problem of unwanted gambling ads troubled sites will not be able to promote. Also need to do a good analysis before joining although the key to the success of the game series is all of them are suffering from huge financial problems for all these spam platforms. This situation is moving towards a frightening situation failure to take action now could lead to further misguidance in the future if there is a system of fines and imprisonment it can be removed.

I think it's fair since sportsbet.com is like one of the biggest sportsbooks in Australia and it seems like it's their fault for letting the spam slip through for over a year. It would've been fine if it's only for a month or two IMO but when that issue is going for more than a year it's not acceptable to allow any casino to get away with it. I rarely unsubscribe from casino mails but so far i'm lucky that I haven't experienced any similar issue since it'd be annoying to see unwanted emails clogging up your inbox. Also i'm not sure if it's just me but I want to point out that the link in the OP doesn't show the actual article.

Wow! That's a huge fine! Definitely it's an irresponsible job they have done by sending advertisements to such people who have unsubscribed from them, but the government should have been more reasonable here! Even though this fine is probably not a big thing for sportsbet considering their revenue is around 300 million usd per year, but if it was done by a small company, they would have been forced to close down their operations due to such financial penalty.

Wondering if they are affiliated or not but doesn’t sound like they are. However, this is common practice to send notification to the gamblers who are not anymore active but that's doing a lot of harm as well. I guess this is a quite good decision from the authority.

It is possible the government is trying to make an example out of them, so other casino operators that are doing the same stop doing it, it is nothing more but a scare tactic but one that is incredibly effective as no one wants to pay millions and millions of dollars on fines and reparations to their customers, I hope that the casinos doing this change their ways, after all the gambling industry is already incredibly profitable, so they do not need to bend the rules to extract a little bit of more profit when that is not necessary.

We shall thank you too for bringing it up and now the op edited his post and clear things out that it was not the sports betting site that we know (sportsbet) but it was another gambling site. Sportsbet is popular to us because it is being advertised here in the forum. The problem that we have here reminds me of this thread > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5378290.0 Where a member complain that he contiguously receive promotional emails despite of excluding himself in the casino.

Before they put a fine they should investigate it first if it was an error same happened to stake casino or they can give a warning first and it seems not right if they will also pay the gamblers aside from the fine.

It's has been made clear the fine levied wasn't against our reputable sportsbet.io I think it would be nice to close the lock the thread to avoid spamming as the raised issue doesn't have much to do with the casinos on the forum. The message is passed and since it should serve as a good warning casinos out there because all the consider is making money and not the health of their customers.

That is really not a huge fine especially for gambling company such as sportsbet. However, I think they are just doing this to notify the company about their illegal activities. It would be higher if they'll be able to do it again. Also, the difference on tax that this kind of big company produced compared to a small gambling company is also the reason why they weren't able to do harsh actions on the company.
Yup, it has been cleared out by the OP himself at the beginning that this company isn't associated on any way to Sportsbet.io. However since this is a gambling related topic so I think there's no reason for the OP to close the thread other than to avoid spammers.

It is indeed a huge fine and I am thinking what does the management of sportsbet.com feel about it? I mean probably they were in so much discouragement about but yeah since it's happened and the only thing they need to do is to take the responsibility out of it. The good thing about the sportsbet.com really know how to take action and responsibility about it because this falls under the irresponsibility of their job. This is going to be a lesson learned for them and make this a great priority next time to not send advertisements to the people who unsubscribe them.

Yeah, sure it is a lot of money.

And the government just did the right thing to put a penalty for that trick that they've done. It is the customers that were already asking for their promotions to stop but they didn't.

Doing an apology won't do.

It's already imposed that they have a penalty to pay and whether they apologize publicly or not, they still need to pay the amount.

This is actually a pretty big company in Australia.

It's honestly not a lot of money to settle for. These guys make billions in profits most likely and $3.x million is peanuts to them.

And I don't think that they are going to stop doing it any time soon either - this is a core part of their business, getting people signed up through mass email and SMS campaigns.

Until that day comes it is important that people learn how to deal with something like this on their own, I know that people like to have the convenience of a single email for all their needs, but when comes to a service that you do not know how long you are going to use it makes sense to have a throwaway email associated to your account, that way if you eventually get tired of the casino in which you are playing and they respect your decision to not send you spam then you can use it for another casino, and if they do not then you just change the password to that email to something you cannot remember and then logout from it, getting rid of the problem of the spam in an efficient way.

Correct, they should apologize, after all they were disrespecting their clients by not following their wishes, however that in no way changes what it has already happened and they need to pay the fine they were imposed, now even if this seems like a lot of money we need to wonder how much money they earned by doing something like this? Because if I were to guess I would say they earned more money than the fine they had to pay, in which case they may not change their ways and keep doing this in the future.

checked the link to the article and read that the institution in control of spam in Australia is taking such step to stop young misinformed people from going into gambling. They is a high degree of people that commit suicide because of gambling, especially those that gambled with the loan they took from the bank. Such dispute in a country should be looked into by the Government and its the reason why the betting company got charged of a huge sum of money for misleading over 3000 citizens that read the spam messages including youths who are not interested in gambling. On the other hand, the sport bet company have accepted to handle the bills and as also suspended email marketing at the moment.

"Trying to unsubscribe"? You mean they haven't unsubscribed yet, hence they received the emails. Or they unsubscribed but received gambling promotional offers? If it is the latter, then the yeah, pay fines to the customers is justified, but if it's the former, then this makes no sense. Anyone can claim that they tried to unsubscribe, they couldn't and ask for compensation for the "damage" gambling has caused them. But this would make more sense if sportsbet did it on purpose (which I doubt) so people couldn't unsubscribe from their newsletter. Anyway, lesson learned. They will likely be more cautious now.

I'd presume the latter.

I agree that if it was the former, the claims are baseless.

In general, any fiat sportsbooks/casinos should understand that advertising is very murky waters. The government will pick at anything you do, so you need to ensure that all aspects of voluntary exclusion are upheld, including advertisements.

Thye already got a warning they know this is coming from the continued warning is it worth it are they profiting from making the wrong advertising method, this will harm the gambling industry, we all know that online casinos cannot just advertise everywhere because of the restrictions, they have a very poor system if a customer unsubscribes the database should be updated right away, they better change their provider to avoid the same scenario.

It is obvious that this happened not because they had a poor system that could not deal with people unsubscribing from receiving promotional emails from them, to me this was obviously a policy from the owners of the casino which decided to ignore those requests and to keep sending those emails in order to try to improve their profits, and when we take into account that they were warned before all of this happened, then it becomes even more obvious this was the case and why the authorities decided to fine them.

An apology won't just be enough if it's already been asked long time ago as request of their users.

As usual, casinos would earn more than the fines that they would pay. That's why if there will be penalties imposed to them, they have no problem of paying that.

They don't want to stop their operations and it's what they want, an obstruction to cause a delay for their business operations.

I believe it is indeed an irresponsible and insensitive thing to do. Spamming previous or even present clients with advertisement most especially if they didn't agree to receive one in the first place is frustrating for the part of someone. Since not everyone is mentally sane to just ignore those advertisement, the sportsbet should do something about it to avoid inflicting harm to those who are planning and undergoing therapies for withdrawal in gambling. The amount they will pay will hopefully be their eye-opener for such sensitive matter. I hope they would do something about their unwanted ads sooner so that the customers would be at peace.

I am sure they would, and they better do. them getting fined is already a huge warning. them getting in trouble again for the same issue would probably result in a much higher fine and could maybe lose their gambling license(though I am not sure that they would actually lose their license, I feel that it should if they made the same "mistake" again).

Who's eye will not open with $3.7m? this will make them pull out all the ads they placed due to panic because if not then they are threatened to pay again and the fees are now going to be extra higher. It's okay if they will send the ads to their present gamblers because they are still active in gambling but not on their previous clients because those people are retired and now taking a rest away from gambling.

There must be a message at the bottom of the mail that if you don't agree to receive this mail, you should unsubscribe it. The unsubscribe button is also next to it. Present and active gamblers should unsubscribe that email if they want to receive regular ads.

We will have to see if they actually change their ways, because even if the amount of money that they need to pay is very high at the same time we know that casinos make a lot of money, so there is the possibility that they may ignore this warning once again and decide to keep doing the same thing.

And in that case what it could happen? Will the government apply another sanction to the casino? Would it be a higher one? Could the casino lose their license? Those are all questions from which we do not have an answer right now but which are important, because there is the possibility that the casino ignores the warning and keeps spamming their customers.

Doesn't seem like any foul actions here, just a genuine mistake with the unsubscribe system. They seem to be a big player in Aus so should understand legislation and the legal costs.

The media loves to demonize any casinos for anything that they can grab at, so this is not surprising whatsoever.

People need to start realizing that a lot of companies would have done the same and have gotten away without any sort of attention from the media. It is only because of the fact that this is a casino institution that this is being stressed in the first place.

what do you mean by "genuine mistake"? the thread mentioned that the gambling site was contacted by acma regarding the emails being sent to people who unsubscribe to them. I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem like a "genuine mistake" to me. (read the quoted post below)

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do you have any proof backing up this claim? the fact here is, people unsubscribe to their email advertisement, people still keep getting it, acma contacted the gambling site regarding the issue yet people are still getting advertisement emails from the gambling site.

For the profit purposes these companies make these irresponsible mistakes and then are obligated to pay the fines but that's good decision to tell others also that these mistakes are not accepted at all and they should take care of such advertisements to be wrongly displayed.

So this is another company from the reputed one which is sportsbet on forum as said above by members so there is no need to worry at all as most of us play there and they abide by such rules and have reputation and public image.The other guilty one i am not aware of.

This kind of incident should be taken seriously by many gambling sites, the fine that the site or this business have paid is not that easy, I mean it is such a huge money that a site can use to improve their site to provide more convenient and exciting experience for their gamblers but then another mistake was done due to the purpose of hitting of getting more profit than they are earning. Good thing about Sportbet.con is that they acknowledge their mistake I just do hope this will be a lesson learned for them from now on.

As they're fined, they won't mind paying that because that's nothing compared to the whole revenue that they get. It's going to be a never-ending cycle until they're imposed with heavier sanctions that will entirely affect their operations like being suspended. But that's the purpose of being fined, just to pay for that penalty.

Yes.

It's not the sportsbet.io that we used to know. They're just the same with the domain name but different in domain extension.

maybe that's the reason why they are okay with paying the fine as the profits outweighs the risks. but being suspended is another thing. they should be aware that if they will continue to violate the agreement, they may lose their license to operate.
but anyway, they are here in this industry, so they know what they are doing and to what extent they can break those regulations. they know the stats so basically, they know their limits.

It is true that the media has the tendency to demonize gambling and gamblers in general, however they were warned about this behavior before they were fined and they still did not changed their ways.

This can only mean several things, that they did not took the warning seriously enough and decided to keep doing it as it brought them money, they were incompetent and they thought they fixed only to realize this was not the case or they were lazy and did nothing about it, and no matter which answer is the correct one, not a single one gives a good impression of this casino.

They wont really be taking it seriously if they do know that they could easily pay those fines but if there would be making out some changes and really tend to get rid of these scenario then they should impose higher

fine or penalty amounts which companies would really be having those doubts and fear on committing those mistakes because it wouldnt really be just worth for them to fine on just committing those unwanted

emails and promotions been sent out on excluded users or something in related with marketing.It is really just right that they should really be penalized.

Most casinos are okay with that.

As long as they're going to settle it as soon as possible, they'll pay the fine whatever amount it is just for them to remove any obstruction for their business. And if they're suspended, AFAIK, there's still a fine that will make them pay to avoid that.

It's always about the money and if it's a bigger amount, they'll be good again. There could be heavier punishment that can be done but it's all about the government and the people if they'll file a bigger case.

Probably one of the competitor received an advertisement as well, though they can just tell the site about the error on their unsubscribe system that its not working properly instead of going into a court, well if there’s a money here as well then why not.

A lot of companies are this, I might try now to unsubscribe to other site and see if its working for them, just to test the water and will not complain though even if those advertisements are annoying sometimes since they are sending the same thing.

We don't know whether the sportsbet.com.au did with intention or by mistake, but now they'll realise a small mistake can cause a big loss. As it is a big firm operating in Australia it needs to know about the policies and should have everything developed accordingly. From a common view point it looks like a simple thing that is being taken to the court, but not having an unsubscribe tab is a big flaw. Anyhow the court have given the judgement and we can't make discussion on it. Hope such mistakes won't happen in again. Luckiest is the users who lost bets landing through the e-mail advertisement.

I think we can safely disregard the mistake option as they were contacted before the sanctions were put in place and they were told to stop this practice, and only once they ignored that warning they were fined.

So at least to me that is more than enough to disprove the theory that it was a mistake and instead it was a premeditated act, and now they have to pay the consequences of that mistake, I just hope they learn their lesson, after all they ignored the warning once so it is entirely possible they ignore the fine as well and keep doing this anyway, in which case something even harsher than a fine could be applied to them in the future.