The 2025 Regulating the Game (RtG 2025) conference in Sydney united Australian gambling regulators, policymakers and industry leaders.
This year’s three-day event broke attendance records thanks to a mix of Australian and international experts gracing the conference.
The ideas shared at the conference will influence the gambling industry in Australia and other jurisdictions worldwide for the next year and beyond.
Regulating Gambling Adverts in an Overexposed World
There was plenty of excitement when Dr Marla Royne Stafford was named as the first conference chair for RtG 2025. After her speech at the conference, it is easy to understand why.
Stafford, who is a professor of marketing at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (UNLV), touched on how difficult it has become to promote responsible gambling in an over-exposed society.
She opened with a statistic that made for grim reading. The average person is exposed to between 6,000 and 10,000 adverts every day, yet only about a quarter are relevant to them.
It has become extremely difficult for important messages about responsible gambling to push through the noise and make any real difference.
Strafford then stressed the need for customers to practice selective attention. She charged them to sift through the information overload and filter out what is irrelevant.
She also highlighted how perception affects the impact of responsible gambling messages. Most people consider responsible or problem gambling messages to be irrelevant because it doesn’t directly affect them.
However, many people mix up responsible gambling and problem gambling, even though the former is not solely for those struggling with addiction.
After pointing out the key issues, Strafford proposed a few ways that the gambling industry can cut through the noise and make responsible gambling messages more effective.
She stressed that campaigns on responsible gambling have to be directed to the right people and highlighted how influencers could be useful in getting the message across, especially through social media.
Barni Evans Insists Australia’s Betting Industry is in Healthy
Barni Evans, the chief executive officer of Flutter-owned Sportsbet, also took to the stage at RtG 2025. He acknowledged the industry faces several challenges but insists Australia is in a ‘good place’.
When compared to the global market, Evans is convinced Australian regulation is ‘not that bad’.
Over the years, Australia has developed an intricate sports betting sector that balances business interests, customer protection and financial compliance.
Evans believes the sportsbooks featured on comparison platform OnlyRacing must work hard to ensure the Australian gambling industry acts responsibly.
He admitted that Sportsbet made mistakes between 2011 and 2016 in trying to adapt to the Australian market. During that period, the company fought against the imposition of funding requirements from horse racing and sport in court and lost.
Defeat was a huge reality check for Sportsbet and forced the company to revise their strategy. However, the company made a huge comeback by leveraging the power of advertisements.
The industry has made huge strides in responsible gambling. Even though there are still a few niggles that need to be addressed, Evans believes Australia is well-positioned in the global betting industry.
Regulators Warn Executives About Potential AI Liability
Industry regulators have warned company executives that they need to understand how artificial intelligence (AI) works or the technology could become a huge liability.
Speaking at RtG 2025, betting industry expert Jane Lin stressed that that operators need to take more responsibility for how AI sifts through customer data.
“Explainability is really important when it comes to AI,” Lin said. “You need to know what your AI is doing – not only for your own benefit so that you can understand whether what it’s doing is legal and ethical but because you may need to explain it to a regulator someday.
“It will never be okay if a regulator comes knocking to say, ‘We don’t know what happened, the AI did it, it wasn’t us’. That just won’t fly, so make sure you know what is happening within your systems because conduct will be attributed to an organisation whether it’s carried out by a human or machine.”
Australia doesn’t currently have mandatory AI regulations but a Voluntary AI Safety Standard was published by the federal government in August providing guidelines on how to use the tech responsibly.
More than anything, Lin urged board members and executives to take AI oversight seriously, with regulators expected to closely examine cases where AI produces unexpected results.
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