1,751 Sites Blocked Since 2019: How ACMA Website Blocking Works Under the Interactive Gambling Act, and What It Cannot Reach
Last reviewed: 14 October 2026.
As of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's June 2026 announcement, 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate websites had been blocked in Australia since the first blocking request in November 2019, and a further update in July 2026 took the total to 1,774. The mechanism is federal, it sits under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, and it works by asking internet service providers to stop resolving a site for Australian users. It is the most visible enforcement tool in the offshore space, and also the one with the clearest limits.
The Federal Layer: What Is Being Enforced
Website blocking enforces federal law, not state law. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 is a Commonwealth statute, and the conduct it targets is the provision of gambling services that are either prohibited outright or offered without the licence they need.
Two categories matter here.
Prohibited interactive gambling services. Section 15 of the Act makes it an offence to provide these services to customers in Australia. Online casino games and online pokies fall into this group, which is why no Australian licensed operator offers them online.
Unlicensed regulated services. Online wagering on sport and racing is permitted, but only when the operator holds an Australian licence. An offshore bookmaker without one is offering an unlicensed regulated service.
The Act also prohibits advertising these services in Australia. That is why affiliate sites, which promote offshore operators rather than running games themselves, appear in the blocking lists alongside casinos.
The State Layer: Where Blocking Does Not Reach
States and territories license and supervise land based casinos, venue pokies and the wagering operators that hold Australian licences. None of that is touched by ACMA website blocking.
The division is easy to blur, so it is worth stating directly. When an Australian licensed bookmaker breaches its obligations, the response comes from the licensing state or territory regulator, or from federal regimes such as BetStop that apply to licensed wagering providers. When an offshore casino site takes Australian customers, the response is federal and comes through the ACMA. Blocking is only ever aimed at the second group.
The Regulator: How a Site Gets Blocked
The process runs in three steps.
- Complaint or detection. The ACMA receives public complaints and runs its own investigations.
- Finding of a breach. Investigators establish whether a service is offering prohibited or unlicensed gambling, or advertising it, to Australians.
- Request to ISPs. The ACMA asks Australian internet service providers to block the site. Sites are also reported to providers of family friendly filters.
The quarterly figures show the scale of the front end of that pipeline. In the first quarter of 2025 the ACMA reported 350 public enquiries about suspicious gambling activity. It assessed 283 as valid, completed 22 investigations covering 25 platforms, and recorded 33 breaches: 20 for providing prohibited interactive gambling services, 12 for offering unlicensed regulated services, and 1 for illegal advertising. Every completed investigation found at least one breach. Twelve formal warnings followed.
The Numbers Over Time
| Reported date | Sites blocked since November 2019 | Reported by |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2024 | 1,011 | AGB, citing the ACMA |
| 24 April 2025 | 1,178 | SiGMA, citing the ACMA |
| June 2026 | 1,751 | AGB, citing the ACMA |
| July 2026 | 1,774 | The ACMA |
The jump between April 2025 and June 2026 is 573 sites in roughly fourteen months, against 167 in the nine months before it. The public reporting does not explain the acceleration. It could reflect more referrals, faster processing, or more mirror domains being counted individually. The ACMA has not published a breakdown that would settle it, so no explanation is offered here.
A separate figure tracks a different outcome. More than 230 illegal services have withdrawn from the Australian market since the ACMA began enforcing the illegal online gambling rules in 2017, up from more than 220 in the July 2024 reporting. Withdrawal means the operator stopped taking Australian customers, which is a stronger result than a block.
The Operators: What Gets Blocked
The June 2026 batch is a useful sample. Twelve sites were named, a mix of casino brands and affiliate marketing websites. One of them, Pointsbetz.com, was identified by the ACMA as imitating the licensed PointsBet service. Impersonation of a licensed Australian brand is a pattern the regulator has flagged before, and it is the case where blocking protects consumers most directly, because the site is designed to be mistaken for a legal one.
The April 2025 reporting noted that most of the 61 sites in that round offered casino style games without any valid Australian licence. That is consistent with section 15: casino content cannot be licensed in Australia, so every online casino site taking Australians is a candidate.
What Blocking Cannot Do
Three limits sit in the design.
Blocking acts at the ISP, not at the operator. The site itself keeps running. Users on a connection that does not apply the block, or who route around it, can still reach it. The public reporting reviewed for this piece does not include data on circumvention rates, and the ACMA has not published any.
Domains are cheap. An operator can relaunch on a new domain faster than a new investigation can complete. That is one plausible reason the cumulative count climbs steadily rather than levelling off.
Blocking does not recover money. The ACMA has said plainly that Australian laws cannot help if an offshore provider withholds winnings. An Australian customer of a blocked site has no Australian regulator to complain to and no licence condition to rely on.
Reading the Signal
Read together, the figures say enforcement is active and growing, and that the offshore supply is persistent. A rising block count is evidence of effort, not of a shrinking market. The more meaningful number is the withdrawal count, which moves slowly: roughly ten more services in about two years of reporting.
For the regime's design, the conclusion is narrower than headlines suggest. Blocking is a friction tool. It raises the cost of reaching Australian customers and removes the easiest path to impersonation sites. It does not, and was not designed to, bring offshore casino play to zero.
What This Means in Practice
For an Australian user, a blocked page is a signal that the federal regulator has already found the service in breach. Online casino games and online pokies are not offered by any Australian licensed operator, so a site offering them to Australians is outside the licensing system by definition. Licensed wagering providers can be checked on the ACMA's public register.
Responsible Gambling
Gambling is for adults aged 18 and over. BetStop, the National Self Exclusion Register, covers licensed online and phone wagering providers, though it cannot reach offshore casino sites, which is exactly where blocked domains tend to reappear under new names. A site that resurfaces after a block offers no Australian complaint path if a withdrawal stalls. Free, confidential support is available from Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858, at any hour.