Unibet Casino says see ya later to Australian players

Pains me to say this, but I did tell you so…the so being Unibet Casino’s impending withdrawal from the Australian market following their acquisition of Betchoice in February.

My words exactly:

“What is more likely, in the short to medium term at least, is that Unibet Casino (including Unibet’s live casino) will close it’s doors to Australian players so as not to jeopardize the Unibet Group’s newly acquired Australian wagering license, or be out of favour should online casino licenses come up for grabs.”

The below notification from Unibet hit my inbox today:

“We would like to inform you that for legal reasons, Unibet will no longer be able to accept Australian players on its Unibet.com website. That means that your Unibet account will be closed by the 31st of May.  But, we are delighted to be able to invite you to our Australian site unibet.com.au where a free bet of up to 100$* is already waiting for you.  “

Unibet.com.au is the re-branded Betchoice and it is strictly a sports betting affair. No live casino dealers. No casino games at all for that matter.

Just a quick note on the mention of  ‘legal reasons‘ being the cause for this policy change.  Australia’s laws and regulations regarding online gambling haven’t changed since the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 came into effect back in 2001. Plenty of amendments have been proposed over the last decade, the most recent set out in a report published by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy which calls for a relaxing of in-play bet restrictions, but no substantive changes have been made. The ‘legal reasons’ do not refer to a law change, but rather the fact that Unibet now have an Australian sports betting license.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Australian players have lost access to another quality live casino which is a pity.  Fortunately there are still a few left, and fortunately still, some of them (like Party Casino) offer access to the very same live dealers that you would find at Unibet.

Related pages from Livedealer.org:

Live casinos welcoming Australian players