Ladbrokes and William Hill to be investigated by Australian Federal Police on their click to Call services

Law breaking will have consequences always. This was what Ladbrokes Australia and William Hill ‘click to call’ betting services found themselves into after it was apparent that the two betting firms had violated gaming laws. This prompted the law makers to task The Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA) to conduct through investigation on the two betting firms. The investigating company later would hand over the investigation to the federal Police.

Back in May, ACMA was tasked with conducting an investigation to the two betting firms with focus based on the mirror live/in-play betting an illegal way of betting that was against Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act of 2001 (IGA 2001).

However, ACMA was forced to withdraw from the investigation and hand over the task to Federal police as it claimed that this was a ‘click to call service investigation and hence it would fall under local jurisdiction thus giving mandate to the Federal Police investigation. This made ACMA distance itself from the case and could not even give advices on the same.

The rules were very clear that anything that would involve irregularities of internet gambling that is based locally in Australia, the ACMA could not intervene. The company claimed that such crimes should be handled by local enforcements and in this case it would be the duty of local Federal Police to take up the role.

Another role that ACMA can play in this category is to report AFP any sort of local proscribed internet gambling.

‘Click to Call’ feature basically involves a situation where a client is in a position of communicate directly with operators in the other end of the wire through microphones that are connected in computers. However, this would only work when a client is live betting. In essence, once a client chooses his or her preferred teams to bet on, it would be now the duty of live market teams to complete the processing.

On the other hand, the two betting firms had earlier stipulated that the new feature was legal since it went along as per the provisions of the IGA 2001 policies.

This article is published in: Secure betting
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