An Advertising Campaign Aimed At Limiting Online Gambling In Australia Has Been Stopped

Added: December 27, 2013

Online gambling in Australia is facing rocky times. Indeed, it is really quite easy to imagine Australia starting to see the same situation that has happened in Canada begin to occur. Major online casino operators and other online gambling related companies such as payment gateways, all pulling out of the Canadian market. Switch Canada for Australia and we could easily see the same thing happening.

The local Australian government has also been very negative about online gambling lately, and has been giving several international online casino providers a hard time, as well as asking several of the major ones to withdraw their online gambling apps from the Apple App Store. Part of this anti-online gambling campaign has been a range of public advertisements that have attempted to point out the dangers of playing at an online casino.

The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association were quite understandably upset by these advertisements, and decided to do something about it. The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association contacted the South Australian government, and pointed out that the advertisements that were attempting to slur online gambling, did not follow the guidelines for billboard use that the same government put in place.

Much of the anti-online gambling campaign follows the theme that online casino addiction starts from playing a simple fun game, and that many online casino operators try to entice younger people by delivering a gaming experience that will appeal to them. Also that online casino companies make it all too easy for younger online gamblers to get sucked in, by offering free to play version of many of the online gambling games found on the pay to play online casino site, most of which contain prompts to switch over to the pay to play versions, usually offering some kind of free bonus.

However, as of right now the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association has got its way, and the billboards that were carrying this government sponsored anti-online gambling message have been taken down, as the local government agreed that they were pushing things a little too far.

However, it should be noted that the government has not said it will stop this anti-online casino advertising completely, it has taken down the existing billboards, but has said that it will fix the problem, which probably means the advertisements will be back, a weaker format, at some time in the not too distant future, so watch this space.