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Independent senator David Pocock has accused the Albanese government of undermining its own pledge to break the connection between gambling and sport, after it emerged betting company logos could remain on professional sporting jerseys until the end of 2031.
Children across Australia could continue seeing gambling brands on the jerseys of their sporting heroes for more than five years under transitional provisions in the federal government's gambling reforms.
The legislation bans wagering company logos on professional sports jerseys, but existing sponsorship arrangements can continue during a five-year transition period, potentially keeping the branding in place until December 31, 2031.
The delay has drawn a sharp response from ACT independent senator David Pocock, who has been campaigning for a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising and has called on sporting clubs to voluntarily abandon betting sponsorships sooner.
"We are in an absurd situation where by the time of the legislation's three-year statutory review, jerseys may still have betting logos on them," Pocock said, according to The Guardian.
Pocock also called on clubs to end their existing jersey sponsorship arrangements "at the earliest opportunity."
Responding on social media, Pocock said the extended transition was incompatible with the government's stated ambition of separating gambling from Australian sport.
"The Govt has talked a lot about breaking the nexus between gambling and sport but allowing betting company logos on team jerseys until potentially as late as 2035 won't do that," Pocock wrote.
"We are in an absurd situation where by the time of the legislation's three-year statutory review, players may still be wearing these logos."
The government says the transition period is intended to balance its reforms with existing commercial agreements. Communications minister Anika Wells said one unnamed sporting club has a jersey sponsorship deal extending until 2031.
"In trying to strike a balance here between grandfathering existing arrangements and ensuring viability, that's what we got to," Wells said.
Wells said she hoped sporting organizations would end wagering sponsorships earlier where possible, but argued those decisions ultimately rested with the clubs.
The controversy follows the government's package of gambling advertising reforms, which includes a new national "Wagering Advertising Opt-out Register." The register is intended to give Australians a single mechanism to opt out of wagering advertising from online content providers and will be administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
However, the reforms stop short of the comprehensive advertising ban recommended by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy's landmark parliamentary inquiry.
Pocock has argued that the legislation will "not break the connection between sport and gambling" and will fail to sufficiently reduce children's exposure to wagering advertising.
The criticism predates the latest dispute over jersey sponsorships.
Earlier this month, Pocock tabled a petition signed by more than 700 Canberrans calling for a full ban on gambling advertising. More than 16,000 emails had also been sent to federal parliamentarians through his Stop Gambling Ads campaign.
"The major political parties are showing just how captured they are by vested interests. They are listening to donors and lobbyists rather than experts and communities," Pocock said at the time.
He said the legislation represented a "weak, watered down bill" that would not adequately protect children from what he described as an "extraordinarily predatory industry".
The senator has also linked the gambling debate to broader concerns about lobbying and the influence of industry over federal policymaking. In a separate social media post promoting an ABC Four Corners investigation, Pocock said recent events had demonstrated "the power of vested interests over public policy" and called for tougher lobbying laws and restrictions on the "revolving door" between government and industry.
Pocock condemns gambling jerseys amid reform backlash
The Alliance for Gambling Reform has similarly attacked the final package, saying the agreement between Labor and the Coalition amounted to "weak" and "timid" reform.
Alliance chief advocate Tim Costello said the major parties had missed a rare opportunity to substantially strengthen protections against gambling harm.
"The reforms that will now go through the Federal Parliament are cosmetic over substance and reflect the major party’s intent to prioritise power, money and vested interests over the welfare of Australians," Costello said.
The Alliance argues the legislation falls far short of the Murphy inquiry recommendations, which included a comprehensive gambling advertising ban, stronger restrictions on inducements, a national gambling regulator and treating gambling harm as a public health issue.
It also criticized the government's reliance on an opt-out model.
"An opt-out register will not be effective in preventing harm, and it is not what Australians are calling for," Costello said.
Alliance chief executive Martin Thomas warned that children were increasingly being reached through sophisticated digital marketing as well as traditional sports broadcasts.
"The evidence shows that underage kids as young as 14 are being targeted through social media to download gambling apps," Thomas said, adding that children were also being exposed to what he described as a "tsunami of gambling ads" through television and sport.
The organization said the government’s measures "will not protect children, will not delink sport and wagering and will not end the saturation of media ads" Australians encounter.
The jersey provisions have become a particularly visible test of that promise.
According to The Guardian, seven NRL clubs currently have wagering or lottery branding on their jerseys, with several agreements running until at least the end of the 2028 season. The Sydney Roosters extended their longstanding UniBet jersey sponsorship in July 2025, with the branding also appearing on the club's women's jerseys.
Public health expert Samantha Thomas said the lengthy transition made it "difficult to take the government seriously" when it claimed it wanted to break the nexus between gambling and sport.
"The government has effectively said that they recognise that gambling sponsorship is harmful to children and then decided that it can continue for the next five years," she said.
Martin Thomas said the grandfathering provisions "underscored how little a difference these compromised gambling reforms will make."
Liberal MP Andrew Wallace, who crossed the floor to oppose the legislation, has also criticized the five-year transition, arguing that two years would have provided sporting organizations sufficient time to secure replacement sponsors.
For Pocock, a child in Year 8 today could potentially reach the end of secondary school while still watching professional athletes take the field wearing gambling company branding.
Featured image: Nat Butcher via WikiCommons / CC BY 2.0
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Kalshi is pushing to keep New York's lawsuit against the prediction-market operator in federal court, saying the state's case cannot be resolved without answering key questions about federal commodities and gambling law.
In an August 21 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Kalshi challenged Attorney General Letitia James' effort to send the dispute back to state court.
"This case should not be remanded," Kalshi said in the filing.
New York sued Kalshi on July 31, accusing the company of operating an illegal gambling business without a state gaming license. The case cites the federal Wire Act alongside New York constitutional, criminal, racing and wagering laws. Officials want to stop Kalshi's operations in the state and are seeking restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties and accounting information.
Kalshi moved the lawsuit into federal court that same day.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) granted Kalshi designated contract market status in 2020. Kalshi maintains that its contracts are federally regulated derivatives and fall under the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction when traded on its market.
Kalshi says federal commodities law overrides New York gambling claims
Sports contracts joined Kalshi's offerings in January 2025. When those products were self-certified, the CFTC asked Kalshi for information showing they complied with federal law, according to the filing. Kalshi responded, and the regulator took no further action.
"The State's claims necessarily raise disputed and substantial federal law issues," Kalshi said.
Kalshi points to three reasons the federal court should retain the case. Its first argument focuses partly on New York's Wire Act claim. Deciding it, Kalshi says, means determining whether event contracts qualify as betting or wagering and examining the Wire Act alongside the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and Commodity Exchange Act.
The company says the same federal questions underpin New York's state gambling allegations because a court must decide whether federal law permits the contracts as swaps regulated by the CFTC.
Kalshi also invokes the federal officer removal statute and argues that its CFTC designation gives it a federally derived property right. Separately, it says New York cannot sidestep federal jurisdiction by excluding the CFTC as a party.
The jurisdiction battle follows regulatory clashes. On August 11, the CFTC issued an emergency order directing Kalshi to continue normal operations while the litigation proceeds, after warning that New York's requested restrictions could disrupt derivatives markets. New York has also pursued a separate Gaming Commission investigation and previously ordered Kalshi to cease operations.
"The federal issue—whether Kalshi's event contracts are unlawful gambling or authorized swap transactions traded on a federal exchange subject to the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction—is 'actually disputed,'" the company said.
Kalshi now wants the federal judge to reject New York's remand request and keep the dispute in federal court.
Featured image: Canva / Kalshi
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is backing the criminal case against Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US Army master sergeant accused of using classified military information to make more than $400,000 trading Polymarket event contracts tied to Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro.
In an August 21 notice, the CFTC asked the US District Judge Margaret M. Garnett for permission to file an amicus brief supporting prosecutors as Van Dyke seeks to dismiss Commodity Exchange Act charges. He argues the contracts are not swaps under federal law and says applying its anti-fraud provision to his conduct would be unconstitutional.
"Both contentions are wrong," CFTC Counselor Cameron Sinsheimer wrote in the letter.
The regulator argues Congress defined swaps broadly enough to include the event contracts Van Dyke traded. It says adopting his interpretation could also significantly restrict federal oversight of prediction markets.
"Van Dyke's distortion of the CEA's text, if accepted, would undermine the Commission's jurisdiction over a huge range of event contracts whose notional volume totals into the tens of billions of dollars," Sinsheimer wrote.
CFTC says Polymarket event contracts fall under federal swaps law in US soldier case
Van Dyke, 38, served with US Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Prosecutors say his role in Operation Absolute Resolve gave him access to classified and other nonpublic details about a mission targeting Maduro.
"The core theory of the Indictment is that Van Dyke took information that he had pledged to keep confidential and, though he was duty-bound not to do so, he used it to make a personal profit," prosecutors said.
Van Dyke had signed nondisclosure agreements covering classified material. One agreement concerning "Western Hemisphere Operations" said information obtained through his work "is now and will remain the property of the United States Government."
According to prosecutors, he opened a Polymarket account on December 26, 2025, before spending about $33,934 on contracts involving Venezuela and Maduro through January 2. US special forces captured Maduro and his wife in Caracas on January 3. Prosecutors say the successful trades left Van Dyke with more than $400,000 in net profit.
A grand jury indicted him in April on five counts covering confidential government information, commodities and swap fraud, wire fraud and an unlawful monetary transaction. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $250,000 bail with travel restrictions.
Prosecutors have called it the Justice Department's first criminal insider-trading prosecution involving prediction markets. Van Dyke moved to dismiss the indictment on July 31.
Van Dyke "committed an old crime on a new platform," they said.
"Because the Indictment alleges all that it must," prosecutors said, "the next step is trial."
The CFTC also rejects Van Dyke's argument that he lacked sufficient notice that federal law covered his alleged conduct. It points to the Commodity Exchange Act, its own regulatory actions and similar contracts traded on CFTC-registered exchanges.
The agency says its proposed filing could help the court address legal questions with implications beyond Van Dyke's prosecution.
"Here, the proposed amicus brief is both timely and useful, and will aid the court in its deliberation of this matter by offering insights not available from the parties," Sinsheimer wrote.
Featured image: CFTC via Wikimedia Commons / Canva
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More than 150 cryptocurrency wallets betting on military events through Polymarket behaved in ways researchers associate with possible insider trading. Now a separate federal prosecution involving a U.S. Army master sergeant is giving those concerns a real-world legal test.
The Anti-Corruption Data Collective, or ACDC, identified 152 wallets making unusually successful longshot bets in military and defence markets. Together, the wallets won about $8 million.
Its August report, Classifying Insider Trading Risk: Analyzing the Longshot Betting Ecosystem on Polymarket, examined 78,496 longshot bets from 12,355 wallets on markets settled through May 5, 2026.
The research does not show that those 152 wallets belonged to military personnel, government officials or anyone else holding classified information. Instead, ACDC created a statistical profile for accounts whose behaviour resembles previously reported cases of suspected insider trading.
Researchers call those accounts "Orcas." They tend to focus on relatively few subjects, win unusually often when betting on outcomes the market considers unlikely and sometimes appear shortly before the event being predicted.
ACDC put wallets with longshot success rates above 75%, concentrated activity and limited market breadth among its most suspicious accounts.
Suspicious military bets appeared on Polymarket before larger traders moved in
Of 1,432 wallets making longshot military bets, researchers classified 152 as Orcas. Another 482 were high-volume "Whales," while 166 appeared to be automated Bots.
The Orcas put roughly $2 million into military longshots and made an average profit of about $52,514 per wallet. ACDC cautioned that proving whether any individual trader actually possessed inside information would require investigative powers beyond the study.
What happened after those bets appeared may be just as important. Around major military events, winning Orca wagers generally arrived before Whales and Bots moved into the same markets.
"In both cases, longshot bets by Orcas preceded longshot bets by Whales and Bots," the researchers found in their analysis of military-market activity.
It raises the possibility that sophisticated traders were watching public blockchain transactions, spotting unusual bets and following them with larger positions. One informed wager could therefore become a signal that other market participants quickly amplify.
"If financial speculators can quickly observe insider bets and act on them in real time, then so can militaries and intelligence agencies around the world," the report says.
ACDC examined activity surrounding Iran-related strikes in June 2025 and February 2026. During the June episode, an Orca made the first correct longshot wager more than a week before the strikes. Another bet about 13 hours before the attack was followed roughly 20 minutes later by a much larger Bot wager.
In February, Orcas again appeared before Whales and Bots. Researchers saw a "flurry" of Orca activity around February 16, followed by increased Whale positions and more automated betting as the strikes approached.
The pattern is consistent with other traders reacting to wallets they believed had better information, although it does not prove that explanation.
Across the full dataset, ACDC classified 556 of the 12,355 longshot wallets as Orcas. The markets represented around $15.6 billion in betting volume and $197 million in net profits.
Orcas averaged returns of 132% across all markets. Among those active in military markets, the report put average returns at about 167%, compared with roughly 1% for Whales and Bots and losses for ordinary traders labelled "Small Fish."
US soldier allegedly made $400,000 betting on classified operation
The statistical warnings now sit alongside a separate criminal case in Manhattan involving Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, who served with U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Federal prosecutors allege Van Dyke used classified and other nonpublic information he obtained through his work on Operation Absolute Resolve to make Polymarket bets involving U.S. military action in Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro's removal from power.
"The core theory of the Indictment is that Van Dyke took information that he had pledged to keep confidential and, though he was duty-bound not to do so, he used it to make a personal profit," prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Van Dyke opened his Polymarket account on December 26, 2025. Between December 27 and January 2, he allegedly spent about $33,934 buying "YES" shares connected to Venezuela and Maduro while working on the operation.
One position involved roughly 13,769 shares predicting Maduro would be out of power by January 31, 2026. Van Dyke allegedly paid about nine cents a share, a market price implying roughly a 9% probability.
U.S. special forces captured Maduro and his wife in Caracas before dawn on January 3. Once the operation became public, several contracts settled at $1 per "YES" share. Prosecutors allege Van Dyke made more than $400,000 in net profit.
A federal grand jury indicted him in April on five counts involving confidential government information, commodities and swap fraud, wire fraud and an unlawful monetary transaction. Van Dyke pleaded not guilty and was released on $250,000 bail subject to travel restrictions.
The Justice Department has described it as its first criminal insider-trading prosecution involving prediction markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a parallel civil case in April.
Van Dyke asked the court on July 31 to dismiss the criminal indictment. Among his arguments, he contended that the event contracts were not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and that classified military information could not constitute property for wire-fraud purposes.
Prosecutors pushed back in an August 19 filing in the Southern District of New York, arguing that all five counts should proceed and that Van Dyke's arguments should be decided at trial.
They say the statutory definition of swaps can cover event contracts with financial, economic or commercial consequences. They also cite Van Dyke's nondisclosure obligations, including an agreement concerning "Western Hemisphere Operations" in which he acknowledged information obtained through his work "is now and will remain the property of the United States Government."
Van Dyke "committed an old crime on a new platform," they said.
"Because the Indictment alleges all that it must," prosecutors said, "the next step is trial."
Public Polymarket trades could expose military secrets
The Van Dyke allegations remain unproven, and the ACDC analysis separately stops well short of claiming that its 152 military-market Orcas possessed classified information. Together, though, the cases illustrate two sides of the same problem: identifying who may have traded on secret information and understanding what their public trades reveal to everybody else.
Blockchain transparency helped ACDC follow funds through cryptocurrency exchanges, bridges, decentralised exchanges and other services. But public addresses do not necessarily disclose their owners, and trails can end at institutions handling assets for thousands of customers.
That makes suspicious behavior easier to spot than the person responsible for it.
The larger security concern can emerge before investigators ever identify a trader. Prediction markets covering wars, military operations and government decisions give people with confidential knowledge a financial incentive to act. Their wagers can then be monitored by algorithms, wealthy investors and potentially foreign intelligence services.
ACDC recommends stronger bettor identification, conditional payouts for suspicious high-risk bets and restrictions on particularly vulnerable market categories. It ultimately argues that some markets present risks those measures cannot eliminate.
"Only outright bans on the highest-risk market segments can adequately address the risks and the structural imbalance they sustain," the report concludes.
Whether any of ACDC's 152 military-market wallets were controlled by people holding classified information remains unanswered. The Van Dyke prosecution could meanwhile test how existing fraud and commodities laws apply when prosecutors allege that government secrets were converted into prediction-market profits.
The underlying vulnerability is broader than either case. Once secret knowledge becomes a publicly visible wager, other traders can see it, copy it and magnify it long before investigators determine who placed the original bet.
Featured image: AI-generated image via Canva / Polymarket
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Ontario's gambling watchdog has hit Booming Games with a CAD $70,000 ($51,000) penalty after discovering that players could use a banned auto-play feature on several online slot titles.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario found the functionality had been available for months through the platform of a licensed operator. Provincial standards do not allow auto-play on slot games while customers are betting money.
According to the AGCO, problems with how Booming Games configured, checked and monitored some of its titles allowed the feature to remain active both when the games launched and afterward.
Once investigators spotted the problem, the commission alerted the operator and auto-play was switched off. The AGCO has not named the operator.
Booming Games has held registration as an Ontario gaming supplier since early 2024 and provides online casino titles to operators in the province. It has 15 days to challenge the $70,000 monetary penalty before Ontario's Licence Appeal Tribunal.
Ontario enforcement puts suppliers such as Booming Games under growing compliance pressure
With auto-play enabled, a slot can automatically run several rounds instead of making the customer manually trigger every spin. Ontario bans that setup for real-money wagering as part of its player-protection rules.
The regulator argues that manually starting each round introduces a break in play, leaving customers with a moment to decide whether to place another wager.
"Requiring players to manually start each spin creates a deliberate pause between wagers," the regulator said. "This pause can help maintain player awareness and control, reduce prolonged and uninterrupted play, and reduce the risk of gambling-related harm."
Those restrictions are designed to curb rapid, intense and uninterrupted gambling while supporting more deliberate decisions. Auto-play can still be offered during bonus rounds when no additional money is being wagered.
The commission identified two breaches of its internet gaming standards. One covered the availability of prohibited auto-play, while the second involved shortcomings in testing and monitoring that left gaming systems or supplies without evidence they were operating as approved.
The action comes amid wider enforcement by the AGCO. Earlier in August, Betty Gaming Ltd. received a CAD $120,000 penalty after weaknesses in its age-verification and eligibility controls allowed underage people to access Betty.ca. Nine people under 19 opened accounts, deposited and gambled, while another 14 created accounts without depositing.
Other recent cases have included a CAD $54,000 penalty against Well Played Media over a promotion the regulator said encouraged high-risk gambling and did not clearly disclose important terms. The AGCO has also targeted unapproved Prime Slot machines, conducting more than 200 inspections and removing over 50 machines from locations including bars, restaurants and lottery retailers.
For Booming Games, the latest order reinforces the commission's position that suppliers share responsibility with operators for keeping products compliant when they enter Ontario's regulated market and as they continue operating.
Featured image: AGCO / Booming Games
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