Casinos not on BetStop

What BetStop is and who runs it

BetStop is the trading name of the National Self-Exclusion Register. Section 61HA(1) of the Interactive Gambling Act places a duty on the Australian Communications and Media Authority to arrange for a body corporate to keep the register. That is the whole of the statutory architecture in one sentence: a regulator that does not keep the register itself, and a company that does.

The body corporate that operates BetStop on the ACMA's behalf is Dataworks Group Limited, ABN 85 612 182 368. The statute is careful about this arrangement. Section 61HA(6) prevents the ACMA from making the arrangement with a body corporate that is a gambling-service body corporate, or that is related to one. The point of that constraint is straightforward: the keeper of a self-exclusion register should not be commercially tied to the industry whose customers the register is meant to protect from themselves.

The register opened on 21 August 2023. It is free to use, and it is a single national register rather than a patchwork of state arrangements. If you have used a state or territory self-exclusion program in the past, the national register is an additional commitment, not a replacement, and the state programs continue to run alongside it.

The register's own published description of itself is narrow, and it is worth quoting because it is narrower than many people assume. BetStop's own sentence reads: "BetStop - the National Self-Exclusion Register does not apply to online casino games or other gambling services that are illegally provided in Australia. You can make a complaint about these services to the ACMA." That is the operator of the register, describing the register's own limits, in its own words. It is the single most useful sentence on this page, and every other section here is in some sense an unpacking of it.

The ACMA is also the body that receives complaints about services the register does not reach. That complaints route is described later, but it is worth flagging now that complaints and enforcement are a different function from exclusion. A complaint is a report to a regulator. An exclusion is a commitment made by an individual that binds a defined set of providers. They are not substitutes for one another, and neither is a shield in the offshore segment.

Who the register actually covers

The register applies to what the Act calls a licensed interactive wagering service. Section 61GB defines that term by three conditions, all of which have to be satisfied at once. The service must be a regulated interactive gambling service. It must be a wagering service. And it must have an Australian-customer link, and must not be provided in contravention of section 15AA(3). The "wagering service" part then draws on the definition in section 4, at paragraphs (a) and (b). That is a technical chain, so it is worth putting plainly what it means.

First, the service has to be licensed in Australia. That single condition does most of the work on this page. A service that holds no Australian licence cannot satisfy it, which means an offshore operator is outside the definition before any question of product type is even reached.

Second, the service has to be a wagering service in the statutory sense. Betting on races, betting on sport and similar wagering on future uncertain events fall inside. Casino games do not, because a casino game is not a wager on an event in that sense. An online casino service is dealt with under section 15 of the Act, not section 15AA, and that distinction alone takes it outside the definition before licensing is considered.

The practical result is that an online casino service is excluded twice over. It is not a wagering service, so it fails the product test. And if it is offshore, it is not licensed in Australia, so it fails the licensing test as well. A reader who wants a single sentence can have this one: the obligations BetStop's framework imposes reach only Australian-licensed online and phone betting operators, and they do not reach casino games, and they do not reach offshore operators. That is a statement about the reach of a statutory duty. It is not a statement about what any particular operator will or will not do.

What the register does cover, positively stated, is a single and coherent category. It is a free and secure way to exclude yourself from all online and phone wagering providers licensed in Australia in one step. That is a meaningful and substantial thing. It is just not the same thing as excluding yourself from every form of gambling you might reach from a phone or a browser.

There is no partial exclusion. Signing up excludes you from all licensed online and phone wagering companies in Australia, not from a subset you choose. You cannot register against one bookmaker and leave the others open. The register is all or nothing within its own class, which is one of its strengths and one of the reasons it is not a customisable tool.

The duration of a registration runs from a minimum of three months up to a lifetime. You choose the period when you register, and the commitment is real for that period. Registration itself takes about five minutes. It requires a mobile number, an email address, and one identity document from a short list: an Australian driver licence, an Australian passport or a Medicare card. A person who cannot complete the online process can call 1800 238 786. A person cannot register somebody else. The registration is personal to the individual, and it has to be made by that individual.

Up to five support people can be nominated as part of a registration. That is a function of the register's design, not a lesser category of registration, and it exists so that people close to the registrant can be part of the commitment.

For scale, as at 30 June 2025 nearly 45,000 Australians had excluded themselves through the register, with more than 30,000 active exclusions at that date. Those are the register's own figures. They describe a measure that a substantial number of people have chosen to use, within the class of service it reaches.

What registration does while it is active

While a registration is active, the framework imposes duties on the providers it covers. A licensed interactive wagering service provider that provides a licensed interactive wagering service to a registered individual commits an offence under section 61KA(1). The penalty is 500 penalty units, with a civil penalty of 750 penalty units. That is the core prohibition, and it is the reason the register has any force at all in the class it covers.

Alongside the core prohibition sit marketing restrictions. Sections 61LA to 61LD prohibit various forms of marketing and promotional activity directed at registered individuals. The register is not merely a list that providers consult at account opening; it is a status that carries continuing obligations about how a provider may communicate with the person who holds it.

How does a provider check? Section 61NC(1) sets out the checking mechanism, and the checking obligation has no fixed timing attached to it in the statute. That absence of a fixed timing is a feature of the design rather than an oversight, but it is also the reason a reader should not assume that a check happens at precisely the moment they imagine. The obligation is real; the choreography is not prescribed.

There is a due diligence defence. Section 61KA(5) provides a defence for a provider that has taken reasonable steps. This is the usual shape of a regulatory offence provision, and its existence means the practical operation of the register depends partly on how diligently each provider runs its own compliance. A reader who wants certainty about behaviour at a particular operator will not find it in the statute.

Section 61JP deals with promotion of the register itself. Providers are expected to make the register visible to their customers, so that a person who wants to use it can find it without having to hunt for it.

What happens to accounts while a registration is active is that they are dealt with under the provider duties above. What happens afterwards is that accounts are not reactivated. When a registration ends, the accounts that were affected do not simply switch back on. Pending bets are subject to a carve-out, so that wagers already struck at the point of registration are not nullified by the registration itself. The carve-out is narrow, and it exists to avoid disrupting settled transactions rather than to provide a route back in.

Early cancellation exists as a procedure, and it is described in the register's own materials. This page states that the procedure exists because a reader should understand that the commitment is not literally irreversible in every circumstance. It does not describe how to use the procedure, it does not frame the procedure as a way out, and it does not present it as a route to gambling while registered. If you are registered and you are thinking about cancelling early, that is a decision to make with a support person or a health professional, not a step to take from a web page. The procedure is a commitment-unwinding mechanism, and every mechanism of that kind costs something in effort and in the seriousness of the commitment. That cost is the point.

Registration on the national register does not replace state and territory schemes. If you are registered with an existing state program, you must still register with BetStop if you want the national protection, and the state program continues separately. Separate schemes also exist for venues, which is a different kind of arrangement again. A person who wants the full set of protections available to them has to hold more than one registration, because the schemes do not automatically enrol you in one another.

Why offshore casinos sit outside the register

This section is about a legal boundary. It is not about any operator, and it does not name one. What it explains is why the phrase "casinos not on BetStop" describes a structural fact rather than a list of products with a shared feature.

The register's obligations are attached to a defined class of service. That class requires Australian licensing and a wagering product. An offshore casino satisfies neither condition. It is not licensed in Australia, and its product is not a wagering service in the statutory sense. The register therefore has no purchase on it, not because of any decision by the operator, and not because of any feature of the operator's terms, but because the statute's reach stops at the edge of the class it defines.

That is the whole of the explanation, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not imply. It implies that registering with BetStop does not create a binding obligation on an offshore casino operator in the way it creates one on a licensed Australian wagering provider. It does not imply that any offshore operator accepts registered individuals. No primary source measures that, and nothing supports a claim that any proportion of offshore operators do. A statement that the register does not bind a category of operator is a statement about a duty. It is not a statement about behaviour, and this page will not turn it into one.

There is a further limit worth stating plainly. No published source states how many operators are connected to BetStop. The register's own materials do not publish that number, and no regulator's report sets it out in a form that could be cited. A reader who encounters a figure for connected operators should treat it as unsourced until they can trace it to a document.

There is also a divergence between public descriptions of the register, and the divergence should not be smoothed over. The Department of Social Services page says the register allows consumers to exclude themselves from all interactive gambling services in Australia. BetStop's own about page says it does not apply to online casino games. Section 61GB gives a third reading, which is the technical definition discussed above. This page does not resolve which the department meant, and it does not present the department's wording and BetStop's wording as if they were saying the same thing. They are not the same sentence, and a reader relying on either should know that the other exists.

None of this is a criticism of the register. A register that covers the licensed wagering segment thoroughly is a substantial public health measure. The problem is not that the register is weak within its class. The problem is that a person can reasonably assume the register covers more than it does, and that assumption is exactly the one this page exists to correct.

What the gap means if you rely on the register

If you have registered with BetStop, you have made a real commitment and it binds a real set of providers. If you are relying on that registration as a general protection against gambling harm, the gap matters to you, and it matters in a specific way: the protection is strongest exactly where the product is most heavily regulated and weakest where the product is least visible to Australian authorities. That is the inverse of what a person might expect from a national register, and it is the reason this page leads with coverage rather than with features.

The consequence, stated as a consequence and not as a procedure, is that the register is not a protection in the offshore casino segment. That is a statement about the reach of a statutory duty. It is not a suggestion that you should go and test the boundary, and it is not an invitation to treat offshore casinos as an exception carved out for you. If you are registered because you have decided that gambling is causing you harm, the correct conclusion from this page is that the register is one part of your protection and not the whole of it, and that you should treat the offshore segment as outside your protection rather than as a loophole in it.

What that means in practice is that the register should be combined with other measures. The support people you can nominate at registration are one. The state and territory schemes are another, and they remain separate from the national register. Venue-level schemes are a third. And the general decision not to hold accounts or install apps in categories the register does not reach is the most direct measure available to an individual, even though this page will not describe the mechanics of doing so, because describing mechanics is how a page turns into a guide.

This page will not tell you how to gamble while registered. It will not tell you how to reach a service the register does not cover. It will not describe the use of any tool to get around a block. It will not discuss multiple accounts, identity documents, or the timing of checks. Every one of those topics fails the test this page is written against: if a reader could follow the page as an instruction, the page has done harm. So the page describes what the law covers and stops there.

If you are in distress about your gambling, the right move is to speak to a support person or a health professional, and the support services in your state or territory are the appropriate first contact. Registration with BetStop is compatible with that step and does not replace it. The page on Knowing when to stop sets out some of the ground around that decision without pretending to be a clinical resource.

There is one more point about responsibility. Section 61KA(5) provides a due diligence defence, and section 61NC(1) sets out how a provider checks, with no fixed timing in the statute. A reader might reasonably want to know exactly when a check occurs. The honest answer is that the statute does not say, and this page will not invent a timing. What can be said is that the obligations exist and that a provider that fails them is exposed to the penalties described above. The gap this page is about is not a gap in enforcement within the licensed segment. It is a gap in the segment the register was never built to reach.

Other schemes and why they are separate

The national register sits alongside state and territory self-exclusion schemes, and the two do not merge. If you are registered with a state program, you must register with BetStop separately if you want the national protection. The reverse is also true: registering nationally does not enrol you in a state program. A reader who assumed that one registration covers all schemes has assumed something the schemes themselves do not provide.

Venue-based schemes are a third kind of arrangement. These operate at the level of a physical premises, and they are separate again from both the national register and the state online schemes. The separation is not a technicality. Each scheme has its own administrator, its own enrolment process and its own set of obligations, and none of them automatically inherits a registration made with another.

The practical consequence is that a person who wants the fullest protection available has to hold more than one registration, and has to understand what each one covers. The national register covers licensed online and phone wagering. State programs cover what their own rules cover. Venue schemes cover the venues that participate. None of them, on any reading available in a primary source, extends to offshore casino services.

That is worth stating as plainly as possible, because it is the point at which a reader might otherwise assume the schemes overlap in a way that closes the gap. They do not close it. They are additive within the domestic regulated segment, and each of them stops at the same boundary the national register stops at.

Wagering licensing as a comparator, not a route

The comparator on this page is wagering licensing, and it is here to show what the register's obligations look like when they apply, not to suggest a way around them. A licensed interactive wagering service is defined in section 61GB by reference to a regulated interactive gambling service that is a wagering service, that has an Australian-customer link, and that is not provided in contravention of section 15AA(3), with "wagering service" taking its meaning from paragraphs (a) and (b) of the section 4 definition. Every element of that definition is a condition, and a service that fails any one of them is outside the register's reach.

The rules about wagering providers are rules about a different product. They are drafted for betting on races, betting on sport, and wagering on future uncertain events, and they are drafted for operators that hold Australian licences. They do not reach a casino game, because a casino game is not a wagering service in the statutory sense. They do not reach an offshore operator, because an offshore operator holds no Australian licence. An online casino service is dealt with under section 15 rather than section 15AA, and that alone takes it outside the definition before licensing is reached. The comparator therefore illustrates the boundary rather than offering a way past it.

What the comparator does show is that the register's obligations are meaningful where they apply. Section 61KA(1) makes it an offence for a licensed interactive wagering service provider to provide a service to a registered individual, with 500 penalty units and a civil penalty of 750 penalty units. Sections 61LA to 61LD restrict marketing to registered individuals. Section 61NC(1) sets out the checking mechanism, and the checking obligation has no fixed timing. Section 61KA(5) provides a due diligence defence. Section 61JP deals with promotion of the register. Those provisions are the machinery of a working register, and a reader should understand that the machinery is thorough within the class it governs.

The point of stating them here is contrast. A person registered with BetStop is protected by that machinery against licensed Australian wagering providers. The same person is not protected by that machinery against a casino game, and is not protected by it against an offshore operator, for the reasons set out above. The contrast is the content of this page. It is not an argument for preferring one product over another, and it should not be read as one.

Two further limits belong in this section. First, the complaints route works only for licensed operators. If a service is not licensed in Australia, a complaint to the ACMA does not operate through the same machinery, and BetStop's own sentence invites a complaint about illegally provided services rather than offering any exclusion from them. Second, the Australian Consumer Law is stated to apply to gambling businesses. That is a statement in a source, and this page does not assert that it is enforceable against any particular operator, or that it creates any right a reader can rely on against an offshore casino. The honest position is that the ACL is stated to apply, and that saying so is not the same as saying it will help.

None of this is a ranking, and no operator is named on this page. The section is a comparator because the specification for this page calls for one, and the comparator is licensing because licensing is the hinge on which the register's reach turns. A reader who takes one thing from this section should take this: the register's rules are rules for a defined product sold by defined licensees, and the offshore casino segment is outside both the product definition and the licensee definition.