No Gambling Ads in Live Sport, Stadiums or on Uniforms: Wagering Advertising From 1 January 2027
Updated: Sep 10
From 1 January 2027, the betting ads that have become a fixture of Australian sport will disappear from live sport coverage, from stadiums and from player uniforms, and will be cut back sharply on television, radio and online.
Parliament passed the reform package on 19 August 2026, after the major parties struck a bipartisan deal in the final sitting days. The following three Bills make it up:
the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026;
the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026; and
the Interactive Gambling (Cost Recovery Levy) Bill 2026.
Together they cut wagering advertising across television, radio and online, restrict inducements, ban commissions tied to customer activity, strengthen BetStop and prohibit online keno and foreign matched lotteries. It is the most significant recasting of wagering advertising law since the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth), and its reach extends well beyond the betting operators themselves. Sporting bodies, broadcasters, digital platforms, advertising agencies, affiliates and individual on-air talent all take on obligations of their own.
The End of Self Regulation
Schedule 1 inserts a new Part 7C into the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth). It also repeals Parts 2 to 6 of Schedule 8 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth) along with the Broadcasting Services (Online Content Service Provider Rules) 2018.
The practical effect is a shift in who holds the whip. Restrictions that operated through industry codes, drafted by industry and administered by industry, become statutory duties enforceable directly by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which can enforce them without the intermediate step of a code breach.
What Can No Longer Be Advertised, and Where
The prohibitions fall into three groups:
restrictions tied to time and place;
restrictions on who may appear; and
standards governing the content of the advertisement itself.
When and Where Ads May Appear
Live sport: No advertising during live coverage on broadcast or online content services, from 15 minutes before the event until five minutes after it ends, within the window between 5.00am and 8.30pm. This was tightened during passage: the Bill as introduced provided for five minutes before, within a window starting at 6.00am.
Television: Outside live sport, advertising is capped at three instances in any rolling 60-minute block across the same 5.00am to 8.30pm window. The cap applies to television broadcasting and narrowcasting services, not to radio. A defence of genuine error and due diligence is available to broadcasters.
Radio: No advertising between 8.00am and 9.00am, or between 3.00pm and 4.00pm, on school days. Weekends, public holidays and school holidays are excluded.
Children's programming and simulcasts: Advertising in programming targeted at children is prohibited outright. Broadcast rules now extend to online simulcasts, subject to racing exceptions.
Venues and uniforms: No display in sports venues, or on the uniforms of players, staff or officials, including for visiting international teams.
Promotion of odds: Wagering advertising broadcast or datacast in Australia must not promote betting odds, except on channels and programs dedicated to racing and wagering. Odds may still be displayed in print and online.
Who May Appear
Athletes, celebrities and influencers: Using them to promote wagering is prohibited.
Wagering representatives: Operator employees can no longer appear as commentators, at or around the venue, or unidentified, in advertising alongside live coverage.
What the Advertisement May Say
Advertising must not be directed at children or portray children as taking part, must not portray gambling as a family activity or a path to success, must not make exaggerated or misleading claims, and must not associate gambling with alcohol. There is also a positive obligation to carry a responsible gambling message.
Notable Persons, Grandfathering and the Racing Carve-Out
The Bill does not define notable person exhaustively. The definition captures current and former athletes, celebrities, influencers and prominent individuals, and the phrase “without limitation” leaves room for ACMA and the courts to read it more widely. Anyone whose name or face carries commercial value should assume they are covered until advised otherwise.
Critically, the obligation binds the notable person as well as the operator. That dual liability pulls ambassador arrangements and affiliate programs squarely into scope, and it means an individual cannot rely on the operator's compliance to discharge their own.
Venue and uniform arrangements entered into before 2 July 2026, the date the Bill was introduced, are grandfathered until 31 December 2031. A deal struck after that date gets no protection at all.
The concession is also conditional: it is lost if the arrangement is varied to extend its duration or to increase the prominence of the advertising, so any renegotiation of a legacy sponsorship risks trading away the transition period for the whole contract.
Racing sits largely outside the regime. Horse, harness and greyhound racing fall outside the definition of sporting event, and dedicated racing channels, programs and online content services attract broad exemptions. Dedicated racing channels are exempt from the live sport ban, the 60-minute cap and the school-hours radio ban, and may promote racing odds. Dedicated racing programs, such as coverage of the Melbourne Cup, are exempt for the duration of the broadcast. Dedicated racing online content services are exempt from the triple lock.
The Triple Lock and the Opt-Out Register
Online content services may publish wagering advertising only where three conditions are met at once. The user must hold a registered account, they must have confirmed they are over 18, and they must have been given a genuine opportunity to opt out and not taken it. Fail any one and the advertisement cannot lawfully be served.
A provider that took reasonable steps has a defence, but with one important exception: it is not available for wagering advertising shown alongside live coverage of a sporting event, where the restrictions apply regardless. Where it does apply, the defence is only as good as the record supporting it. Evidence of compliance must be retained for each of the three elements separately, which makes age confirmation and opt out status data that has to be logged and kept, not merely acted on at the point of serving.
The Obligation Travels Up the Chain
Exposure does not stop at the platform. A person who authorises or causes the content to be provided also commits an offence, unless they exercised due diligence to satisfy themselves the platform had implemented the triple lock. Advertisers and agencies therefore carry an independent verification obligation. Contractual warranties from the platform will not be enough on their own, since the duty is to check, not to be told.
Adstop: The Opt-Out Register
The package separately establishes a wagering advertising opt-out register, to be called Adstop, a single point through which an individual may opt out across every service they use rather than platform by platform. ACMA will build and administer it, funded by a levy on wagering companies. Opt out functionality must be prominent.
Two significant gaps remain. First, the mechanics are unresolved: it has not been settled whether the register pushes registrations to platforms or whether platforms must check their own lists against it, and that allocation determines where the compliance burden falls. Second, the timing.
The Government has indicated that Adstop will not be operational when the broader changes take effect, and the industry has publicly questioned whether a register of this kind can be built in the time available. The triple lock will therefore carry the full weight of the opt out requirement from commencement, with platforms running their own opt out lists in the interim and facing a migration to the central register at some later point.
Inducements, Commissions and Enforcement
Direct marketing of inducements is prohibited in three circumstances: for 14 days after a customer signs up, for three months after a person deregisters from BetStop, and at any time, to customers identified as at risk of gambling related harm.
The third limb is the one to watch. It presupposes a working identification process, which imports a customer monitoring duty into what is framed as an advertising restriction. An operator cannot comply by simply switching off a marketing channel. It has to know which of its customers are at risk, on an ongoing basis, and be able to show how it reached that view. The detail is still to come: the red flag scheme is to be imposed by regulation, with the metrics that trigger a flag, the transparency requirements and the question of whether a flag expires all yet to be settled. Operators cannot build to the standard until it exists.
Commissions to staff or affiliates calculated on customer activity are also banned, which removes the revenue model underpinning much of the affiliate sector.
Payments, Access and the Reach of the Act
Schedule 2 pushes enforcement out to the infrastructure layer. Authorised deposit taking institutions and payment system participants must prevent, as far as reasonably practicable, funds being transferred to illegal operators. Parallel obligations fall on internet service providers, domain name system providers, app distribution services and search engines. Together, these obligations make it harder for Australians to find illegal operators and harder to pay them
.
The jurisdictional reach is expanded to match. An illegal gambling advertisement is now taken to be published in Australia if it is accessible by any Australian end user, which captures offshore operators who never directed anything at the Australian market in particular.
Penalties
Maximum civil penalties for advertising contraventions are $364,000 for an individual and $1,820,000 for a body corporate, rising to $2,730,000 for anti-avoidance conduct. All are expressed in penalty units and move with Commonwealth indexation. Separately, under the BetStop amendments in Schedule 3, ACMA will have 24 months rather than 12 in which to issue infringement notices, which materially extends the period during which a campaign remains exposed after it has run.
The Sleeper Issue: Trade Promotions and Rewards Clubs
Schedule 4 prohibits online keno and foreign-matched lotteries. It also narrows the trade promotion exemption, and that narrowing captures businesses well outside the wagering sector.
Two independent categories are pulled in. The first is trade promotions run on a recurring basis as part of a paid subscription or membership, such as a rewards club with a monthly draw. These are caught outright.
The second is trade promotions where entry is conditional on purchase and the promotion is a core part of the business rather than merely incidental to it. Only the second limb turns on the core-versus-incidental question, and that line has not been tested. Retailers, media subscriptions, loyalty programs and membership organisations should check their promotions before January, even with no connection to gambling.
Commencement and Review
The reforms commence on 1 January 2027, with implementation phased across three years and the first twelve months prioritising high risk settings. The legislation will be reviewed three years after it takes effect.
Key Considerations for Affected Organisations
Sporting bodies, clubs and rights holders: read every venue signage arrangement, uniform placement and ambassador deal against the new prohibitions. Only arrangements entered into before 2 July 2026 are grandfathered, and varying one to extend its term or increase the prominence of the advertising forfeits the protection for that contract.
Broadcasters, streaming services and platforms: you will need account based gating, age assurance and a prominent opt out, with evidence retained separately for each element. Note that the reasonable steps defence does not extend to advertising shown alongside live coverage of sport.
Agencies, brands and affiliates: the due diligence obligation on those who authorise advertising means a platform's compliance failure can become yours. A warranty from the platform will not discharge it, because the duty is to verify rather than to be told.
Licensed operators: commissions tied to customer activity are prohibited, which will require affiliate and staff incentive structures to be rebuilt. The at risk limb assumes you can identify those customers, so an ongoing monitoring capability is now a compliance requirement rather than a responsible gambling initiative.
Across all four, the reasonable steps standard turns on documented governance and controls. An organisation that cannot show what its arrangements were at the time something went wrong will struggle to run the defence, however careful it was in practice.
Australia has moved from a co-regulatory model to a statutory regime enforced directly by the regulator, with penalties calibrated accordingly. Organisations that treat the coming months as preparation time rather than a grace period will be in a materially stronger position.
Authored by Olivia Gebron of BlackBay Lawyers
Click to connect
Olivia is an Associate at BlackBay Lawyers, working across employment law and commercial litigation at every stage of a dispute.
Holding a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology Sydney, she reads every dispute twice, as a legal problem and as a business one, and writes regularly on emerging employment law risk.