
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is continuing its crackdown against what it claims are illegal online gambling operators. In its latest news release on this topic, dated Nov. 13, the ACMA revealed that it has ordered the country's ISPs to block nine more internet gaming websites.

The sites added to the ACMA's blacklist are:
Of these sites, the ACMA accuses wizbet.app and next2go-au.com of attempting to imitate licensed sites. A couple of them look like affiliate websites (Topio Networks and The Pokies Reviews). The rest of them are gambling sites that offer casino and sports betting services.
We can get an idea of what these sites are like by examining one of them, Cashed Casino:
The Cashed Casino WebsiteHere we can see that there are casino, live casino, and sports sections. The middle of the page is devoted to a banner about the “250% up to €2,700” welcome bonus. All along the bottom of the window are the top games.
The Cashed Casino website is pretty representative of the sites the ACMA targeted. Some of them have the various elements in different positions, but they mostly provide the same kinds of gaming action.

For many years, the Australian authorities took a mostly laissez-faire approach to online gaming because loopholes in the law meant that most operators were technically in compliance with it. However, this all changed with the passage of the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill (IGAB), which was passed by Parliament and became law in 2017.
The IGAB tightened the language of the Interactive Gambling Act of 2001. Under the new rules, only online sportsbooks, casinos, and poker rooms that obtained a valid license from a competent Australian licensing authority were allowed to offer their services in the country. However, no mechanism was put into place to license casinos or sportsbooks that conduct their business over the internet. This left sportsbooks as the main type of real money online wagering permitted to Australians while prohibiting casino and poker games.
The ACMA was given broad enforcement powers under the regime established by the IGBA. It can investigate violations of the law and hand out fines. In many cases, the ACMA convinces gambling outfits to stop serving the country by sending strongly worded letters threatening vague future legal action.
The ACMA Enforces the Interactive Gambling Act and the Interactive Gambling Amendment BillAfter a couple years of basically using scare tactics to drive online gaming corporations out of the country, the ACMA added another arrow to its quiver. Since November 2019, it has routinely employed IP blocking against a frequently updated blacklist of sites.
According to the 1997 Telecommunications Act, ISPs have an obligation to prevent their networks from being used for breaking the law. How this works in practice is that the ACMA directs ISPs to block certain IP addresses being employed by offshore gaming firms. Once the blocking is active, Australians who attempt to browse to those sites cannot access the content and instead see a warning message from the ACMA.
The initial rounds of IP blocking focused almost exclusively on those firms accepting sports bets, offering casino games, and running peer-to-peer online poker games for Australians. However, other types of sites soon came to be targeted by the ACMA.
Affiliate sites that merely direct users to international gambling destinations have also drawn the fire of the ACMA's overzealous regulators. So too with game providers, which do not directly provide gambling to customers but license their software to entities that do.

Overall, the sites named in the ACMA's Nov. 13 statement are not very well-known online gambling operators. They're on the smaller side although a few of them have carved out a niche for themselves serving the Australian market.
It's likely that the ACMA, having already dealt with the big fry, are now turning their attention to increasingly smaller and less-prominent targets. One wonders whether or not this strategy has already reached a point of diminishing returns and if the taxpayers – even those opposed to real money gaming – would support spending more money on going after increasingly obscure and minor operations.

We've already mentioned that the ACMA has engaged in multiple rounds of enforcement actions against entities that it claims are breaking Australian online gambling law. Starting out with just two websites on its blacklist, the ACMA has since ramped up its efforts.
For example, in December 2023, the ACMA released a list of 10 separate sites, including New Vegas Casino, that it was adding to the list of prohibited sites. In February 2024, another dozen sites were added.
Just this year alone, the ACMA blacklisted a couple of sites in March and continued by naming another eight prohibited sites in May.
Including the latest set of nine proscribed organizations, the total number of websites blocked now stands at 1,369. In addition, the ACMA claims that another 220 services have voluntarily exited the Australian market since the new gambling laws began to be enforced in 2017.

The ACMA takes seriously its responsibilities for combating illegal gambling. It claims to do so in order to protect Australians from the depredations of firms that may not have customers' best interests in mind. The ACMA states that anyone using “illegal gambling services risk[s] losing their money.”
However, a close examination of the blacklist shows that it contains the names of reputable and well-established websites as well as smaller and possibly less responsible entities. Since there are no online casino or poker sites approved by the ACMA, anyone seeking these forms of entertainment must necessarily turn to offshore providers, and by blocking the more prominent among them, the ACMA may be directing traffic toward shady and relatively unknown businesses.

Fortunately for Australian fans of internet poker and casino games, as well as proponents of liberty everywhere, the ham-fisted efforts of the ACMA are often easy to bypass. Firms that see their websites blocked often simply launch new domains to get around the IP blocking.
Another commonplace tactic is to have users change their DNS settings from the defaults. This lets them bypass most IP blocking techniques. You can learn how to do this by following our detailed instructions.

There are still a number of trustworthy online poker and casino companies that faithfully serve the Australian market regardless of what the ACMA feels about it. There are no provisions of Australian law that make it illegal for you to play on these sites; it's the providers who are shouldering the entire legal risk.
We feel that the best among them is Ignition Casino. When you make your first deposit via crypto-currency, you can get a 150% up to $1,500 bonus in the cardroom and another $1,500 to use for casino gaming.
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If you would like to learn more about Ignition, then consult this accurate Ignition Poker review. For other internet poker options, check out this list of Australian online poker destinations.
Nov. 19, 2025 – by Max Golden, Editor-in-Chief
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