ACMA Announces Compliance Priorities for 2024-2025
Author: Daniel Lovecek, Principal
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has recently outlined its compliance priorities for 2024-25 with a number of notable focus areas for participants in the gambling sector.
Update and summary of the ACMA’s compliance priorities for 2024 –2025
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has recently outlined its compliance priorities for 2024-25 with a number of notable focus areas for participants in the gambling sector.
Of the 8 priority areas, industry participants should particularly note the ACMA’s intentions to:
Continue their focus on compliance with interactive gambling safeguards
Target and enforce companies distributing misleading spam messages
This is consistent with the ACMA’s stated commitment to focus on the social, financial andhealth-related impacts and harms associated with gambling.
The ACMA’s other compliance focus areas include:
Protecting telco customers experiencing financial hardship
Supporting telco customers experiencing domestic and family violence
Disrupting SMS impersonation scams
Safeguarding Triple Zero emergency call services
Tackling the online supply of dodgy devices
Combating misinformation and disinformation on online platforms
Continuing focus on interactive gambling safeguards
The ACMA has reaffirmed its priority to focus on interactive gambling safeguards in response to the risks associated with problem gambling. In relation to gambling safeguards within its remit, the ACMA’s key goals for 2024–25 will be:
to educate consumers industry compliance and enforce industry compliance with the now operative credit card and crypto bans;
to continue raising awareness of BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register; and
to develop new tools and approaches to disrupt illegal gambling services provided to Australians.
Targeting misleading spam messages
Another key area of focus for the gambling industry is the ACMA’s prioritisation of seeking to minimise the direct harm to consumers from spam messages and unlawful electronic marketing. We have seen the ACMA prominently pursue enforcement action against a number of interactive wagering operators in recent years.
The harms associated with spam messages and electronic marketing include:
intrusion on privacy;
loss of agency over personal data;
unlawful competitive advantage to businesses;
loss of time and productivity, and anxiety; and
frustration and confusion.
The ACMA’s stated priority is to enforce spam rules to stop commercial messages being misleadingly sent as ‘service’ or non-commercial messages. This especially applies to marketing and messages from interactive wagering service providers (WSPs) or financial services where there may be a high risk of harm to consumers. It will be important that all WSPs maintain strict compliance to the Spam Act 2003 and regularly monitor customers choosing to opt out from receiving marketing materials. Customers who have registered with BetStop must not receive any direct marketing or inducements
