One of the Albanese government\u2019s flagship gambling reforms, a ban on using credit cards for online wagering, had the least impact on Australia\u2019s heaviest betters, new research shows.<\/p>\n
The ban saw most gamblers swap their form of payment to transaction accounts and left open a range of loopholes dedicated wagerers could exploit, according to a report by the e61 Institute.<\/p>\n
While the 2024 reform<\/a> made betting more inconvenient, most gamblers continued to place bets using their own money and did not rely on credit to fund their spending, the study found.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Credit card-using gamblers\u2019 average fortnightly betting spend fell from just over $200 across card and transaction accounts to $0 on card but $150 via a transaction account.<\/p>\n The government has also not addressed loopholes such as using credit cards to take out cash advances or deposit into PayPal accounts, or taking out personal loans.<\/p>\n The average credit card gambler did not need to pursue these, though, as they had enough money to continue betting uninterrupted, the study by the economic research institute found.<\/p>\n The minority of gamblers who reduced their spending as a result of the ban were typically casual betters who quit altogether due to the inconvenience, according to the report\u2019s co-author, Adit Maitra.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not super clear that [the ban] has restricted borrowing to gamble in any sense,\u201d Maitra said.<\/p>\n The online gambling peak body, Responsible Wagering Australia, declined to share whether betting companies had seen any decline in membership or revenue. Its chief executive, Kai Cantwell, said the companies had strongly supported the ban.<\/p>\n The ban successfully prevented gamblers from racking up large credit card debts but did not limit debit spending. It also did not prevent credit spending on lotteries<\/a> or, indirectly, on\u00a0poker machines<\/a>, which Maitra noted were associated with the most significant harm.<\/p>\n \u201cHitting that section of the market might have more of an effect on reducing harms than hitting some other sections,\u201d Maitra said.<\/p>\n The e61 research adds to growing questions over the effectiveness of government reforms addressing Australia\u2019s high gambling rates, as Labor weighs limits on wagering advertising<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another flagship reform, the BetStop self-exclusion register<\/a>, only has active exclusions for 30,000 individuals, even though an estimated 400,000 Australians are high-risk gamblers, according to government research.<\/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 information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data 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 The study, released on Thursday, showed public awareness of BetStop was low, and wagering providers were failing to actively promote the platform.<\/p>\n Other recent reforms, such as a requirement for betting companies to send customers monthly activity statements, have been flouted.<\/p>\n The Northern Territory regulator fined Sportsbet $313,140 in November after it failed to send statements to thousands of customers over 18 months. A Sportsbet spokesperson said the company had self-reported the issue and taken immediate action to fix it.<\/p>\n Lauren Levin, a gambling expert and consumer advocate, said it showed the government needed to take further action to protect Australians from gambling harms.<\/p>\n \u201cThis government does a lot of bragging about everything it has done for gambling consumer protection, but those measures were only ever designed to be first steps,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the Albanese government\u2019s flagship gambling reforms, a ban on using credit cards for online wagering, had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-295385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}