Australia Bans Online Gambling Credit Lines

Australian operators no longer allowed to offer any sort of incentives to their customers.

Australian online gambling operators have suffered a new blow from the country’s legislators, who decided they won’t be able to offer credit lines to their customers.

Legislators believe credit lines encourage players to gamble money they do not have and can lead into debt and problem gambling.

A Tough Time For Operators

Credit lines were an important aspect of the online gambling business in the Land Down Under, which is worth around $1.4 billion. It is a common practice among Australia’s operators to offer attractive bonus to new customers, mainly to try out the service without spending the real money.

There is a wide variety of bonuses and offers available, and while operators claim this is a mean to attract new and keep existing customers, legislators believe credit lines encourage a bad habit.

Online gambling operators won’t be able to offer credit lines any more, and will have to make some additional changes to their policies. First of all, players must be entitled to determine their own betting limits. Secondly, the operators must deal with the issue of problem gambling, creating a self-exclusion list on a national level.

This will allow gamblers who feel they have a problem with it to ban themselves from visiting any of the country’s online gambling websites. After a gambler gets registered on the self-exclusion list, he will automatically be excluded from visiting any online gambling service available in the country.

The legislators wanted practical proposals and ideas, which could be easily enforced and in a short period of time.

Alan Tudge, Australian Human Services Minister and one of the key legislators calling for reforms to the online gambling industry, thinks there will be a lot of challenges in the coming years.

A Beginning of Gambling Restriction Era

Anti-gambling establishment is happy that the government is taking steps to enforce new and much more strict regulations on the industry, but there are those who believe even these measures are not strict enough.

Chief advocate for World Vision, Tim Costello thinks that special attention should be paid to online gambling advertising. He compared gambling to any other addiction, saying the ads shouldn’t be aired on TV.

Gambling industry in Australia is facing tough times, and it remains to be seen if the legislators will have any mercy when it comes to imposing strict regulations in the future.