Australia’s online sportsbooks have been accused of providing VIP customers with drugs, escorts and alcohol at events attended by the companies’ senior executives.
The accusations, from former Canberra Raiders NRL player Luke Bateman, were aired during a Senate inquiry aimed at pressuring the Australian government into imposing a complete ban on gambling advertising. This follows a previous inquiry held in 2022 and a subsequent report, titled, “You win some, You lose more,” which called for the full ban as well as establishment of a national gambling regulator.
The government recently announced a raft of reforms to gambling advertising and promotion laws but stopped short of a total ban.
Giving evidence on Monday, Bateman, 31, claimed he was flown to various VIP events around the country by some sportsbook operators when he was in his early 20s and on one occasion did drugs with the bosses of one of those operators.
As reported by the Australian Financial Review, Bateman said, “There was another time I remember when I went to an exclusive event through a betting company that was hosted in … a rental on the canals of the Gold Coast, and the entire sort of C-suite of the company was there. They were sort of all in the back room doing drugs together, and I was out in this room doing drugs with all of them. This is like the chief executive, the founders, the VIP managers.”
There were also claims that this was common practice among operators, with Tim Costello – who heads the Alliance for Gambling Reform – naming leading sportsbooks Tabcorp and Sportsbet as being among those engaged in such conduct.
In response, a Sportsbet spokesperson told the AFR it “has zero tolerance for conduct of this nature” but added there was “no evidence whatsoever of the allegations.
“No information has been provided to us beyond what was referenced during the inquiry proceedings,” the spokesperson stated. “Given the seriousness of these allegations, we ask that any evidence supporting them be urgently provided to us so that we can investigate them thoroughly through the appropriate channels.”
Tabcorp said, “The claims made before the Senate inquiry do not form any part of Tabcorp’s customer offering.”
The government’s Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 includes restricting gambling advertising on TV to no more than three ads each hour between 6am and 8.30pm, with a complete ban during live sport broadcasts within those hours; banning gambling ads through online platforms unless people have a logged in account, are over 18 and have the option to opt out of gambling advertising; and banning gambling ads on the radio during school drop-off and pick-up times.
The reforms also ban the use of athletes, celebrities or influencers to promote wagering; ban the broadcasting of ads promoting sporting odds; ban gambling ads in sports venues and on players’ and officials’ uniforms; and crack down on illegal gambling operators by allowing banks and payment systems to block transactions while giving the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) more powers to act faster to block these websites.
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