“Why are you sending me somebody else’s account statement and betting activity and who received mine??” asked one pointer on Twitter.
”Just got sent link to someone else’s statement too,” replied another.
“Same thing happened to me, extremely worrying,” quipped a third.
And what of Sportsbet’s response (the company was tagged in tweets from early July)? “Still radio silence from them,” lamented one account.
Sportsbet notified the NT Racing Commission of the snafu in earlier in July.
We hear Sportsbet isn’t terribly worried, given the statements are identifiable only by a personal betting number (without names and addresses). Which is handy, as draft legislation will increase penalties available to the privacy regulator to a maximum of $10 million.
That’d be a much steeper penalty than the ones Sportsbet received from Liquor & Gaming NSW last year for spamming customers with enticements when customers had opted out of such material (a paltry $135,000 fine) or the separate $22,000 penalty earlier that year for other advertising breaches. (The Australian Communications and Media Authority separately scored a $3.7 million penalty against Sportsbet this year for spamming customers).
But this is Australia, where you can launder money for international criminals, lie to gaming authorities, short-change the tax man, provide VIP service to underworld criminals, and gerrymander development restrictions, and the casino regulators will let you get away with it until the media reports it.
Sportsbet is currently advertising for a new head of compliance, after some recent turbulence in its legal and external affairs team.
This includes the loss of their head of corporate affairs, head of policy, head of legal, senior counsel, head of compliance, and head of NT government relations (where the company’s license is domiciled).
The good news is the growth team is getting a new compliance boss who will report to the chief growth officer, expanding the risk employees in that team. Just in time.
Perhaps that’s a good thing, given Sportsbet’s current chief legal officer Julie Ryan has had a mixed history with delivering growth.
Prior to her current gig, Ryan was Endeavour’s head of external affairs, where she was involved “late in the process” to secure the planned Dan Murphy’s in Darwin, according to the independent review of the proposal by Danny Gilbert.
That review found the company failed to engage sufficiently with Aboriginal groups concerned the mooted piss-up factory would supercharge already high rates of alcohol-fueled misery in the area, and thus the proposal was dumped in 2021.
Nevertheless, as Sportsbet’s new head of compliance, you’ll require the passion to deliver on the company’s “purpose… to build an iconic Aussie brand that brings excitement to life for generations to come”. Nothing more exciting than receiving a list of someone else’s failed bets.