The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued formal warnings to five operators for offering illegal gambling in the country.
These include MyStake, part of Santeda International BV; Lucky Dreams, part of Dama NV; Viperwin from NovaForge; Retrobet from Hollycorn NV; and Rocketplay, part of Pulsup.
According to the documents, all five of these operators were hosting online casino websites accessible to customers in Australia without a licence.
While most of them used .com domain names, RocketPlay in particular was offering online casino websites through an .au domain.
By making gambling accessible to Australian citizens without a licence, this contravenes the Interactive Gambling Act 2001.
The companies listed operate under licences from Curaçao, Anjouan or Cyprus.
However, for anyone who follows Australian regulations closely, the names of these operators will look familiar.
There are at least 19 separate formal warnings applied to Hollycorn NV on the ACMA websites over the past few years.
The website states that civil penalties for offering illegal gambling can be AU$2.5m (USD$1.7m) per day for an individual, or $12.4m per day for a corporation.
ACMA did list Retrobet as one of the websites blocked in its latest investigation report, alongside the other brands mentioned above.
In the report, only a few companies seemed to receive fines for contravening the Interactive Gambling Act.
These were Tapcorp Holdings, who were handed infringement notices this year totalling AU$158,400; Tabcorp (again) in 2024 with infringement notices of AU$262,920; and Entain in 2023, with AU$13,320.
In contrast, the KSA in the Netherlands handed down a record fine of €24.8m ($28.9m) against Novatech and a €1.8m fine against Fortaprime SRL, when they were found to offer illegal gambling to residents in the country.
As for action within the industry, Upgaming told Global Gaming Insider last week that it had severed ties with Santeda following an “intensifying scrutiny” around the operator’s unregulated footprint in restricted jurisdictions.
In Q4 2025, ACMA looked into 483 enquiries and complaints, found 69 breaches of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (IGA) and issued 10 formal warnings
