Sportsbet.com.au in probelms for unwanted gambling advertising

[AicecreaME]

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

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. }

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.

[acroman08]

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).

[jostorres]

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.

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.

[wxa7115]

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).

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.

[timerland]

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.

[acroman08]

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

[worle1bm]

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.

[molsewid]

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.

[boyptc]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[AmoreJaz]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[wxa7115]

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.

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.

[carlfebz2]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[boyptc]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[goaldigger]

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.

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.

[KennyR]

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.

[wxa7115]

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.