Racing turnover pushed away as bookies reduce risk

The Australian racing industry’s susceptibility to the compliance crackdown within the wagering sector has been laid bare with corporate bookmaker PointsBet confirming it had deliberately pushed away “at-risk” racing bettors.

In its latest results, PointsBet said it had accelerated its move towards 50-50 turnover share between racing and sports, with a concerted strategy to “maintain compliance settings above industry benchmarks, reflecting its commitment to player protection and sustainable growth”.

“This has resulted in a softness in racing turnover — in particular, high-staking/high-volume clients with most at-risk behaviours,” the company said.

It comes as PointsBet reported its Australian turnover across the first nine months of the Australian financial year had dropped 1 per cent, from $1.715 billion to $1.69 billion, compared to the same period last financial year.

PointsBet is one of the most sports-focused of Australia’s bookmakers, and under its new majority ownership, Japanese company MIXI, it would appear to be destined to continue on that path.

The reasons for eschewing racing turnover come in the context of a much-publicised AUSTRAC investigation into Tabcorp, and broader reports that bookmakers are turning away high-turnover punters.

Tabcorp has banned as many as 100 punters, including 33 in the past 12 months, largely for failing to meet its ‘know your customer’ and anti-money laundering monitoring requirements.

It is believed that among those banned in recent months have been high turnover, retail punters.

PointsBet did not specifically mention AML requirements in its update, but spoke of “risk behaviours” beyond the impacts of the National Self Exclusion Register.

Overall, the PointsBet update, which, although only nine months, was defined as a full-year update to bring it into line with the Japanese financial calendar, revealed few defined green shoots in its Australian business, which is focussed on a lower-staking but broader customer base.

Across its Australian and Canadian businesses, PointsBet recorded an overall loss of $26.6 million for the year, up from $18.2 million in the previous full year. Normalised EBITDA showed a $0.8 million loss.

Total group revenue, when compared across the same nine-month window, was down slightly from $188.4 million to $186.6 million, while overall operating expenditure was down by $4.4 million, driven by a reduction in marketing spend.

While active clients in Canada grew 9 per cent, in Australia that number fell by 1 per cent. Overall, PointsBet had 298,100 cash active clients across the nine months in both countries.

Regarding the impacts of product fees, regulation and taxation, PointsBet reported it paid $79.8 million in GST, point-of-consumption taxes, and product fees to Australian governments, racing bodies, and sports bodies. That represented 47.7 per cent of its net win of $167.3 million.

PointsBet pointed to higher AFL product fees as a material impact of these rising costs.

“PointsBet over indexes on AFL, which means the increases in AFL product fees in FY26 had a likely greater impact on PointsBet gross profit versus market,” it said.

Further regulatory headwinds are expected with the introduction of stronger federal advertising regulations in Australia from the start of 2027, something PointsBet said it broadly backed.

“PointsBet has publicly supported the key themes of the proposed reforms and has proactively shifted its advertising strategy in anticipation of the changes,” it said.

“The full extent of the impact will not be known until the enabling legislation is released.”

PointsBet reported that the merger of its operations with MIXI, which holds 66.4 per cent of its ownership, had progressed well.

“PointsBet completed a successful transition to MIXI’s controlling ownership, combined with deliberate strategic choices to strengthen the company’s positioning over the medium to long term,” it said.

MIXI also released its annual results at the same time, reporting that its net sales and EBITDA both increased 20 per cent due to the performance of its betting businesses, including PointsBet.

Specifically, net sales in its betting businesses increased 126.1 per cent, with PointsBet contributing more than 70 per cent of this growth.