Australia has passed the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2026, introducing new restrictions on betting advertising, inducements and illegal gambling services from Jan. 1, 2027. The legislation cleared Parliament on Aug. 19 after the Labor government accepted a package of Coalition amendments to secure enough support in both chambers.
Betting advertisements will be banned during live sports coverage between 5am and 8:30pm, beginning 15 minutes before an event and continuing until five minutes after it ends. Gambling advertising will also disappear from sports venues and players’ and officials’ uniforms, while athletes, celebrities and influencers will no longer be allowed to promote wagering products.
Television broadcasters will be limited to three wagering ads per hour between 5am and 8:30pm outside the live-sport blackout, while radio stations will face a complete ban during school drop-off and pick-up periods. The legislation also prohibits the broadcast promotion of sporting odds, although dedicated racing and wagering programming retains some exemptions.
Online advertising will remain legal, but platforms can only show wagering ads to users who are logged in, confirmed to be at least 18 and given an option to stop receiving them. Labor and the Coalition also agreed to create a national Wagering Advertising Opt-out Register, allowing Australians to remove themselves from online gambling marketing across participating services through a single system. Gambling companies will fund the register through an industry levy.
Inducements received tougher restrictions during negotiations between the two major parties. Operators will be prohibited from directly marketing them to customers during the first 14 days after account creation, for three months after someone leaves the BetStop self-exclusion register, and at any time to customers identified as being at risk of gambling harm. Amendments also restrict commission arrangements that reward staff based on how much individual customers wager or lose.
ACMA will receive expanded powers to target illegal online gambling, including mechanisms allowing banks and payment providers to block transactions involving designated services. The bill also bans online keno products the government has called “pocket pokies,” prohibits foreign-matched lotteries and strengthens protections around BetStop, Australia’s national self-exclusion system.
The government introduced the bill on July 2 as its response to growing pressure over gambling advertising and the 2023 You Win Some, You Lose More parliamentary inquiry chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy. That inquiry made 31 recommendations, including a phased comprehensive ban on online gambling advertising, a national gambling regulator and much broader restrictions on inducements.
Labor stopped well short of those recommendations. The final bill still permits television and online gambling advertising under specified conditions and does not create the national regulator proposed by the Murphy inquiry. Independent Senator David Pocock, the Greens and several gambling-harm advocates consequently opposed the legislation even after the Coalition amendments were accepted.
The disagreement also split the Coalition. Nationals MP Pat Conaghan and Liberal MP Andrew Wallace crossed the floor in the House of Representatives after arguing that the compromise remained too weak. Conaghan, who served on the original Murphy inquiry, called the legislation only a “marginal improvement” and continued to support stronger restrictions and a national regulator.
Communications Minister Anika Wells called the package Australia’s strongest gambling-harm legislation to date, while critics have focused on the gap between the final law and the complete advertising ban recommended three years earlier. The reforms will now move into implementation ahead of Jan. 1, leaving broadcasters, online platforms and wagering operators a little over four months to adapt advertising systems to the new rules.