By Ben Blaschke
Australia’s online gaming regulations just got a whole lot tougher after the Australian Senate passed the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016 last week.
The Bill, which closes loopholes in the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, strengthens the government’s ability to prosecute illegal offshore operators including heavy fines for those illegally providing online gambling services to Australians. It also prohibits “click to call” betting – a popular betting option many licensed operators had used to circumvent restrictions on in-play betting.
The Bill will officially be signed into law by the Governor-General this week, after which unlicensed operators will have around 30 days to withdraw their services.
However, while the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016 is seen as an important step in protecting both the Australian public and licensed bookmakers from unregulated offshore operators, it has dealt a crushing blow to the country’s poker community who had campaigned for online poker to be exempted from the Bill and regulated.
Only two weeks ago the Australian Online Poker Alliance (AOPA) fronted a special senate hearing into online poker where AOPA founder Joseph Del Duca, poker players Daniel Laidlaw, Oliver Gill, Luke Brabin and James Devine and highly respected maths professor Brian Alspach spoke out in support of a regulated online poker industry.
For now at least, those efforts appear to have been in vain with the world’s leading online poker site PokerStars sending an email to its Australian customers late Friday informing them of its intention to withdraw real-money services from the local market.
“We’ve been aware of this day coming and have done our best to keep you informed, but we can confirm that we’ll be closing our real money poker tables to players in Australia, most likely around mid-September,” PokerStars said.
“We’re proud to have seen the Australian poker community grow so strong over the last decade. We do respect the Australian Government’s decision in taking steps to protect consumers and hope that in time we’ll be able to serve real money poker to you again. In the meantime, we will continue to offer play money poker and we hope to continue to welcome many Australian players to our tables.
“We’d also like to thank the Australian Online Poker Alliance for their campaigning on behalf of the game and suggest that you consider lending them your voice if you’d like to see a regulated return of online poker to Australia.”
Mr Del Duca told Inside Asian Gaming that the AOPA will continue to push for online poker to be regulated under Australian law.
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