Palmerbet Faces Enforcement Action After Self-Excluded Player Kept Betting

Australian bookmaker Palmerbet has entered into an 18-month court-enforceable undertaking after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found it breached national self-exclusion rules.

The case involved a customer who registered with BetStop, Australia's National Self-Exclusion Register, in September 2023. Despite that registration, Palmerbet did not close the customer's account until February 2025.

During part of that period, the customer was still able to gamble, placing 312 bets between December 2024 and February 2025.

Palmerbet Failed to Close BetStop Account

Under Australia's self-exclusion rules, wagering providers must close accounts belonging to people registered with BetStop as soon as practicable and must not provide them with online wagering services.

According to ACMA, Palmerbet failed to do that.

The regulator has not publicly explained the exact technical or procedural reason the account remained active. However, the length of time between the customer joining BetStop and the eventual account closure raises questions about how effectively operators are matching self-exclusion records against their own customer databases.

Self-exclusion systems rely on more than the existence of a central register. Operators also need internal processes that correctly identify affected customers, close their accounts and prevent further wagering activity.

In this case, those protections did not work as intended.

Palmerbet Must Review Its Compliance Systems

ACMA has not issued Palmerbet with a financial penalty in this action.

Instead, the bookmaker has entered into an 18-month court-enforceable undertaking requiring a comprehensive independent review of its BetStop compliance systems and processes.

Palmerbet must also make the investment required to implement any recommended improvements.

The company has repaid all deposits made by the affected customer from the time they registered with BetStop until their account was eventually closed in February 2025.

If Palmerbet breaches the undertaking, ACMA can apply to the Federal Court to enforce its terms.

Dabble Also Faced Action Over BetStop Breaches

The Palmerbet case follows another major Australian enforcement action involving BetStop.

As Casino.com News recently reported, Dabble Sports paid AU$1,069,200 in penalties after ACMA found the bookmaker had failed to close 157 wagering accounts belonging to people registered with BetStop.

Dabble also sent 839 electronic marketing messages to 165 self-excluded customers and was placed under a two-year court-enforceable undertaking.

The two cases are different in scale and outcome, but both show that BetStop compliance is becoming an increasingly visible area of enforcement for Australian wagering operators.

Why Self-Exclusion Compliance Matters

BetStop was designed to give people a single way to exclude themselves from licensed Australian online and telephone wagering services.

For that protection to work, operators need to respond accurately and quickly when someone registers.

A failure can be particularly serious because people using self-exclusion have already taken an active step to prevent themselves from gambling.

The Palmerbet case demonstrates how weaknesses in the process can undermine that protection. A customer who had already registered with BetStop was still able to place hundreds of bets before the account was finally closed.

For regulators, the issue is therefore not simply whether an operator participates in BetStop, but whether the systems behind that participation actually work.

With ACMA continuing to take action against wagering providers over self-exclusion breaches, Australian bookmakers are under growing pressure to ensure BetStop registrations result in prompt and effective account closures.