A man who \u201cbinge gambled\u201d $40,000 in an 11-hour session was awarded VIP status by the bookmaker BlueBet and assigned a dedicated personal manager who encouraged him to keep betting and took a cut of his losses.<\/p>\n
A regulator has found it wasn\u2019t until the man had gambled $700,000 four months later and displayed multiple \u201cclear red flag behaviours\u201d that BlueBet checked whether he could afford to be betting so much.<\/p>\n
The Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission (NTRWC), which regulates most online gambling companies in Australia, described Bluebet\u2019s conduct as \u201cunacceptable\u201d and \u201cextremely concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n
The regulator found that when the man complained about having run out of money to gamble, his VIP manager supplied him with bonus bets, deposit matches and placed funds directly into his account.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n On one occasion, when the man\u2019s request for an inducement was initially declined, he requested his account be closed. Within two minutes, the VIP manager had placed $500 of bonus bets into his account. The man had already lost $4,000 that day.<\/p>\n A federal parliamentary inquiry, led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy<\/a>, called for inducements like bonus bets to be banned. It warned they encouraged riskier bets, higher losses, and undermined harm minimisation messages.<\/p>\n BlueBet, according to the regulator, prioritised the retention of a profitable customer over its legislated \u201cresponsible gambling responsibilities\u201d. It found no evidence the VIP manager had been trained in harm minimisation.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of monitoring the situation and engaging in meaningful responsible gambling actions, BlueBet chose to award the complainant VIP status and assign a dedicated VIP account manager, whose commission was tied to the complainant\u2019s net gambling revenue,\u201d the NTRWC decision said.<\/p>\n Bluebet told the regulator that it called the man for a \u201cresponsible gambling check-in\u201d after he repeatedly failed to place bets on his credit card due to insufficient funds. But the regulator found this call, which went unanswered, was prompted, in part, by \u201cpayment processing issues\u201d and not concern for his wellbeing.<\/p>\n On the day after the phone call, the man continued gambling and requested bonus bets from his VIP manager.<\/p>\n \u201cAt no stage did the account manager make mention that BlueBet was concerned about his wagering activities from a responsible gambling perspective,\u201d the NTRWC decision said.<\/p>\n \u201cRather, the VIP manager continued to encourage the complainant to wager with BlueBet through the promise of the provision of upcoming bonuses.\u201d<\/p>\n In the two weeks after the unanswered phone call, the man gambled close to $400,000 with BlueBet.<\/p>\n Missed opportunities<\/p>\n The man\u2019s gambling account was eventually closed when he texted his manager to say he wished he \u201chad been pulled up earlier by you guys\u201d as he had lost everything.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the numerous earlier red flags, it is extremely concerning that it took the complainant himself reaching out to BlueBet for his account to be closed,\u201d the decision said.<\/p>\n \u201cBlueBet missed multiple opportunities for timely and appropriate action and it\u2019s disappointing that the responsibility fell on the complainant rather than BlueBet taking a more assertive role in protecting the complainant from further harm.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite finding Bluebet\u2019s conduct to be extremely concerning, the bookmaker was fined $53,380, which is less than 10% of the $570,000 the man lost. This was the maximum penalty available to the commission.<\/p>\n The Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie has previously called for financial penalties to be massively increased to ensure gambling companies are effectively punished for their misconduct.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be an amount that hurts the company financially and hurts them so much that they think, \u2018heavens, we can\u2019t afford that again\u2019,\u201d Wilkie said in 2023<\/a>. \u201cIt should hurt them so much that shareholders say to the board, \u2018that must not happen again\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n BlueBet merged with gambling company Betr earlier this year and no longer operates as a stand-alone brand. The conduct examined by the regulator took place during 2021.<\/p>\n In Australia, Gambling Help Online<\/a> is available on 1800 858 858. The National Debt Helpline<\/a> is at 1800 007 007. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found via the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic<\/a> on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare<\/a> on 0808 8020 133. In the US, call the National Council on Problem Gambling<\/a> at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM.s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who \u201cbinge gambled\u201d $40,000 in an 11-hour session was awarded VIP status by the bookmaker BlueBet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-67074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}