🔒 🔒 RWWA review revives WA TAB sale question, but at what price?

Analysis: A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the four months since former WA racing minister Paul Papalia was asked about the future direction of the WA TAB in a parliamentary estimates hearing.

At the time, Papalia’s response was inconclusive, but left the door open to a possible sale.

“I do not have a position on the TAB other than … there is no one trying to buy it,” he told opposition racing spokesman Lachlan Hunter.

Fast forward to September and not only has Papalia left parliament – Don Punch has replaced him as racing minister –  but RWWA chief executive Ian Edwards has confirmed his intention to depart in November.

All of this occurs as the WA Government undertakes an independent review of RWWA, which has put the state-owned TAB’s outlook, assets and governance under formal examination.

The terms of reference do not mention a sale, something that has been on and off the WA political agenda for a decade. But the conditions that made the WA TAB attractive in 2022 have reversed, and any returning buyer will be pricing a very different business.

The government is sitting on an interim report from the Financial Sustainability and Governance Review with final recommendations possibly due around October. Nobody in government is talking about selling the TAB, but there is plenty of conjecture in the wider racing industry.

The review’s terms of reference asked the panel to assess the TAB’s operating outlook, the decline of pari-mutuel wagering, RWWA’s assets and their contribution to its objectives.

There are also the broader political implications of the state running its own wagering company, something that doesn’t happen anywhere else in Australia.

That is even before you get to the concept of a state-based betting company operating in a highly competitive national market, not to mention a burgeoning unregulated presence, which WA is far from immune from.

RWWA’s 2025 annual report shows the tension at the centre of the model.

The TAB’s margin rose to $354.3 million from $344.4 million, sports turnover grew 25 per cent and operating profit before distributions reached $176.2 million. As we reported in October, the wagering result outperformed national trends.

The broader organisation around it still lost $28.5 million for the year to July 31, 2025, following a $41.4 million loss in FY24. The 2026 result, due in the next couple of months, will be eagerly anticipated.

The annual report attributed rising costs partly to investment in financial-crime controls, specialist staff and responsible-wagering measures.

Those are costs a national bookmaker spreads across a far larger customer base than the WA TAB’s 113,000 active online accounts.

Hunter put that to Papalia in parliament on December 3, 2025, referring to “reports that the WA-owned TAB is haemorrhaging money” and claiming its value had “collapsed by almost 50 per cent in three years”.

Papalia did not dispute the direction of travel, saying there were “diminishing returns from wagering over time as practices in betting change” while costs continued to escalate.

In May he went further: “We have diminishing money coming in and costs are going up.”

The sale history sets the reference point any potential buyer will use.

Legislation enabling a sale passed in 2019 after roughly five years of political negotiation. The government halted the first process in August 2020 amid pandemic uncertainty.

The second, restarted in 2022, produced a reported offer of about $1 billion from betr before the McGowan Government scrapped it in November 2022, saying no bidder could confirm the financial commitments required.

Papalia was blunt about his own role in May. “I tried to sell it. I was the minister when we tried to sell it,” he said. “Actually, we began the process and were well down the path, and then the term ended, my role as minister ended at that time, and the next guy failed.”

The third attempt, launched under Premier Roger Cook in August 2023 with Barrenjoey advising, lost its most logical bidder when Tabcorp walked away in February 2024 saying the terms did not stack up.

As The Straight argued at the time, the $1 billion valuation was already gone, and a deal would only be possible on terms far more favourable to the buyer.

Tabcorp’s strategic logic has not changed.

WA remains the only gap in its national retail and pari-mutuel footprint. What has changed is the price expectation.

While the AUSTRAC investigation launched in May looked to have dulled Tabcorp’s cautionary mindset, it did put forward a $267 million bid for wagering tech company Betmakers last month.

“You would expect that Tabcorp will come calling again sooner or later,” one industry figure, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this month.

Is there anyone else?

Entain has its New Zealand experience and its own technology to lean on but is nothing more than an interested observer at the moment, and the same can be said for the Flutter-owned Sportsbet.  

It seems unlikely the WA government would entertain another offer from betr, while PointsBet, even with the might of MIXI behind it, would be bolter’s odds to want to take on a state-owned betting company.

When the $1 billion price tag was floated, it promised to ensure racing industry funding for the foreseeable future, but any deal at a much lower price would put pressure on the government to compensate through tax settings, market protection, or funding guarantees.

That would shift the cost from the sale price to the long-term arrangement.

Any future buyer would be doing due diligence against a compliance backdrop the earlier bidders did not face.

RWWA’s FY25 accounts disclose that an AUSTRAC compliance assessment, begun in 2024, remained ongoing when the statements were signed in October 2025, and that any financial effect could not yet be quantified.

The review’s terms of reference specifically examine whether RWWA is ready to meet its AML/CTF obligations, something which has become the bogeyman of the wagering sector across Australia.

Papalia linked racing to the regulator’s wider push in May. “I have had indications from AUSTRAC that it is looking further afield,” he said. “It has gone further afield and is looking towards racing as well because it is vulnerable just by its nature.”

For a state seller, an unresolved AUSTRAC assessment of its own operator would reduce the price it could command. Given Tabcorp’s own concerns in that area, it would also reduce its appetite.

The industry’s own submissions to the review have focused less on ownership than on the flow of point-of-consumption tax. WA collects 15 per cent on net wagering revenue and passes 30 per cent of receipts to racing, against 80 per cent in Queensland and Tasmania and 50 per cent in Victoria.

Perth Racing chief executive James Oldring told The Straight in August that government now takes “three and a half times more in tax out of wagering than they did seven years ago”, while insisting the 15 per cent rate “must not go up”.

Papalia cautioned in May that adjusting distributions was “not necessarily that simple”, while confirming “nothing is off the table”.

Given he is no longer in charge, and Punch has yet to speak publicly on the WA TAB or other key matters in the review, the industry has understandable concerns.

A sale of the WA TAB may help alleviate those worries. But the question remains: at what price?