Dabble Pays A$1.07m Penalty For Self-Exclusion Failures
Australian sports betting app Dabble has paid a A$1,069,200 penalty after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found the company breached the country's online gambling self-exclusion rules, the ACMA said this week.
The ACMA's investigation found Dabble Sports Pty Ltd kept the accounts of more than 150 people who had registered with BetStop, Australia's National Self-Exclusion Register, open when they should have been closed, and sent them marketing material more than 800 times after they had opted out of gambling promotions.
BetStop lets people exclude themselves from all licensed sports betting operators in Australia for a period of their choosing, from three months up to a lifetime ban.
Licensed operators are legally required to check the register and close a self-excluded customer's account within 24 hours of an exclusion request, and to stop sending them any direct marketing.
Dabble's Compliance Undertaking
As part of the outcome, Dabble has given the ACMA a court-enforceable undertaking to overhaul its BetStop compliance processes over the next two years, including independent audits of how it checks the register and handles marketing suppression lists.
"Self-exclusion is one of the most important protections in place for people experiencing gambling harm," the regulator said in its published notice, adding that BetStop only works if operators act on exclusion requests immediately and do not continue to target those customers with promotions.
What It Means For Bettors
The case is the latest in a series of ACMA enforcement actions since BetStop launched in August 2023, and comes as the regulator has stepped up compliance checks across the licensed wagering sector. Betting operators in Australia now face fines running into seven figures for BetStop failures, regardless of company size.
For bettors, the case is a reminder that self-exclusion tools are meant to be a hard stop: anyone who signs up to BetStop should see their accounts closed within a day and should not keep receiving betting offers by email, SMS or app notification. Customers who believe an operator has kept marketing to them after self-exclusion can report it directly to the ACMA.
Operators licensed in the UK have equivalent duties under GAMSTOP and the Gambling Commission's self-exclusion rules, which similarly require licensees to close and stop marketing to self-excluded accounts without delay.
