The outlook for the gambling market in Australia this year

Almost ten months ago, the first online casino license was issued in Australia. Since then, the market has already made a serious step forward, although the progress was not as fast as some analysts expected, the legal gambling business continues to develop and strengthen its position. Let's try to determine what the future holds.

Online establishments local and foreign

Unlike land-based establishments, virtual gambling is focused mainly on the Australian audience, so on many online casino sites , you can set only English language. For example, to enter Jackpot Jill https://jackpot-jill.com/login you need to enter the site, which is in English, there are no other options.

By mid-November, thirteen online casinos, three poker rooms and one bookmaker received Curacao licenses. It should be noted that foreign money is also coming here, however, they bring them not players, and gambling companies. For example, licenses and casino and poker room received a large European company Vbet (it is possible that in the future it will also acquire a bookmaker's license, as it is engaged in this area of gambling). It is worth noting such an important event as the appearance on the market poker-room Ggpoker at the moment it is one of the leaders of the industry, recently increasingly crowding the world's largest room PokerStars.

Thus, the industry shows relatively good development rates. In addition, there is a chance that the solution of a number of problems (discussed below) will be able to further strengthen both domestic business and increase the attraction of foreign capital.

Land-based establishments and tourism

It should be noted that land-based gambling establishments, according to the law, should be located only on the territory of hotels and inns, so they are primarily oriented towards tourists. This approach is practiced in many countries and has proved to be quite successful, as it helps to attract money to the budget. A huge flaw in domestic legislation was, however, a high tax on winnings, it is 19.5%, and is levied on the amount of total, not net winnings, that is, captures the bet itself. This makes Australia unattractive for gaming tourists traveling primarily to visit casinos. Most countries offer much more favorable conditions, for example, in Georgia, the tax on winnings from tourists is not withheld at all.

Nevertheless, the industry is still developing, as in less than a year seven casinos and nine companies offering slot machine halls have received Curaçao licenses: most of them have opened three or more locations (the leader is First, which owns eighteen machine halls). According to the statistics of different companies, the ratio of local to foreign visitors is now about 50:50 or 40:60 respectively.

General business problems and ways to solve them

The major obstacles facing businesses at present can be named as follows:

• insufficiently streamlined processes of paperwork and connection to the Curaçao monitoring system;
• triple licensing and high income tax;
• For foreign companies, the problem is that the hardware must be located in Australia by law.

However, there is hope that at least part of these problems will be solved: in the first reading the law No. 2713-d On Amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine and other laws of Ukraine on taxation of income from activities to organizing and conducting gambling and lotteries was adopted. According to it, triple licensing will be abolished and income tax for all gambling companies regardless of type will be 10%. The law is expected to finally come into force soon.

Work within the country course of responsibility

The steps taken by the business itself are also important. Thus, in May 2024, the American Gambling Council (AGC) or the All-Australian Gambling Council started its work. It aims to unite all legal operators, and, on the one hand, to fight for their rights, establishing a constructive dialog with the authorities, on the other hand, to strengthen the norms of internal professional ethics. At the moment, most of the legal gambling companies have already joined the organization; also a number of business media became its associate members.

In December, eleven AGC member companies signed an Advertising Memorandum to reduce emotional pressure on potential customers, e.g., not to include in advertisements photographic or video footage of games (chips or money in hand, pushing machine buttons, etc.).

International cooperation

In addition to attracting foreign tourists and gambling companies, Australia is also working on professional international cooperation. Now we can name two significant events in this regard.

First, in August 2024, AGC joined the international SBC Leaders group, which brings together both the world's largest operators and national gambling associations from different countries, such as BGC (UK), SWIMA (USA), BOS (Sweden) and others.

Secondly, in December, the SBC Summit CIS conference was held in Kiev, dedicated to the gambling business in Eastern Europe and CIS countries, noting that Australia hosted it for the first time. The participants of the conference were legal operators, representatives of Curacao and a number of public organizations, as well as a number of famous people, such as the Olympic gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling and member of the Verkhovna Rada Zhan Beleniuk. As this event showed, many foreign companies are interested in entering the Australian gambling market, and their representatives were actively interested in the legal and technical details of such a procedure.