An investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald published on 14 August found Facebook and Instagram carrying ads for offshore online casinos, including slot, roulette and blackjack simulators. Some ads impersonated licensed brands such as Crown Melbourne and Star, neither of which operates online. Many advertisers are affiliates earning up to 20% of losses from referred players. Some sites are structured to make withdrawals impossible.
Australian regulator ACMA cannot penalize Meta directly under current law: proving a breach requires showing that the majority of a platform's visitors are in Australia, which is unattainable for global platforms. ACMA can only request voluntary removal. That will change in 2027. A bill introduced to parliament on 2 July will give the regulator power to issue removal orders for unlicensed operator ads and require ISPs, DNS providers, app stores and search engines to block access to those sites. Banks and payment providers will be required to block transfers to unlicensed platforms. In 2025–2026, ACMA reviewed 70 offshore operators, found breaches in all and blocked 49 sites.
The problem is not confined to Australia. In June, Dutch industry association VNLOK filed suit against Meta and lodged a complaint with the European Commission. According to VNLOK, Facebook and Instagram served over 70,000 gambling ads to Dutch users in the final quarter of 2025, more than 95% from unlicensed operators. In March 2026 unlicensed ads reached around 37.9 million Dutch users, the majority of impressions falling to people under 24. VNLOK is demanding that Meta be found in breach of the EU Digital Services Act and compelled to remove illegal content under threat of fines, following a 2025 case in which an Amsterdam court imposed fines of up to €100,000 per day on Facebook and Instagram for DSA non-compliance.
Meta, with a market cap of around $1.52 trillion, says the problem of illegal gambling requires coordinated action by domain registrars, hosting providers and regulators. The company stated it disabled accounts linked to brand impersonation and removed more than 159 million fraudulent ads globally last year. Critics point out that in Ireland and Indonesia Meta successfully filters such ads under pressure from local laws but does not apply the same mechanisms in Australia.
