Australia’s communications regulator has treated TAB’s marketing breaches as more than a collection of individual calls and messages. The enforcement package focuses on whether the company’s consent, calling-hour and identification controls can reliably prevent repetition.
What ACMA found
According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, TAB made 351 telemarketing calls to numbers on the Do Not Call Register without consent between February 2024 and June 2025. The regulator also identified 82 calls outside permitted hours and nearly 4,000 calls that did not properly identify the caller, the purpose of the call, or both.
A separate element arose after TAB self-reported in 2025 that more than 217,000 marketing emails and text messages had been sent over 16 days to customers who had unsubscribed from specific marketing channels. ACMA said it considered the self-report, the limited period and the fact that some recipients had not withdrawn consent from every channel when setting the penalty.
Why the undertaking matters
Financial penalties are only one part of the outcome. ACMA accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring an independent review of TAB’s telemarketing systems, remedial improvements and regular compliance reporting. A separate spam undertaking from an earlier action remains in force. ACMA said the new matter is its second spam enforcement action against TAB, following penalties of more than AU$4 million in 2024.
That combination points directly at data governance. A large operator may hold consent status in customer relationship software, campaign tools, call-centre systems and third-party messaging platforms. If those systems do not reconcile quickly and consistently, an unsubscribe request can be honoured in one channel and ignored in another.
At scale, marketing consent is not a checkbox. It is a continuously synchronized operating control with an audit trail.
A broader enforcement environment
The communications action sits alongside ACMA’s enforcement of Australia’s online-gambling rules. On 15 July, the authority requested internet-service providers block another group of illegal gambling and affiliate sites. It reported that 1,774 sites had been blocked since the first request in November 2019 and that more than 230 illegal services had left the Australian market since enhanced enforcement began in 2017.
The two programs address different legal duties. Spam and telemarketing enforcement concerns consent, calling practices and identification. Website blocking concerns prohibited or unlicensed online services under the Interactive Gambling Act. For operators and suppliers, the common requirement is demonstrable control: records must show what was permitted, what was sent, which system made the decision and how an error was corrected.
What compliance teams should watch
- Whether unsubscribe choices propagate across SMS, email, outbound calling and VIP-service systems.
- How consent evidence is retained when customer data moves between internal and third-party platforms.
- Whether campaign approvals test local calling hours and Do Not Call Register status before launch.
- How independent review findings are translated into monitored technical controls.