Skip to article
News Published Updated 8 min read

$120,000 to spruik a casino that's banned in Australia. Here's what the Vegastars saga tells us about where punters' money is going.

Australians are tipping an estimated $3.9 billion a year into illegal offshore gambling sites. Two former AFL players have now been warned over promoting Vegastars.

Andrew Porter

$120,000 to spruik a casino that's banned in Australia. Here's what the Vegastars saga tells us about where punters' money is going.

Australians are tipping an estimated $3.9 billion a year into illegal offshore gambling sites. That number has more than doubled since 2019 and is on track to hit $5 billion by 2029. Roughly one in every five dollars Aussies bet on sport, and one in every seven bet on racing, is now going to a bookie that holds no Australian licence, pays no Australian tax and answers to no Australian regulator.

That is the backdrop to this week’s news that two former Brisbane Lions, Mitch Robinson and Rhys Mathieson, have been handed formal warnings by the ACMA for promoting Vegastars, an offshore online casino that was already on the regulator’s block list before either of them posted a thing.

We read both investigation reports. The detail is better than the headlines.

The deal: $40,000 a month

On or about 3 March 2026, Robinson signed two contracts tied to Vegastars:

  • An Exclusive Ambassador Agreement worth $30,000 per month for onsite, social media, YouTube and streaming content.

  • A Podcast Promotion Agreement worth $10,000 per month for plugs on the Rip Through It podcast he co-hosts with Mathieson.

That is $40,000 a month. The contracts required him to “incorporate” three things: giveaways funded by the company, live commentary during the footy, and “slot play and betting content”.

By the time the ACMA’s Notice to Produce landed on 12 May 2026, Robinson had been paid $120,000 in three instalments of $40,000. He pulled the content and walked away the same day.

Mathieson’s arrangement was smaller and looser. He told the ACMA it was a verbal deal through a talent intermediary, Essential Talent, and that he was paid $19,200 across three payments from an outfit called BWG Services Ltd before his own notice arrived in July.

Combined, the two were paid $139,200 for roughly two months’ work.

What the content actually was

The ACMA investigated two Robinson posts and three Mathieson posts.

Robinson’s Instagram video on 6 April 2026 showed him and another person apparently winning about $800 on Vegastars while sitting in a popular Brisbane pub during an AFL match, then shouting the “winnings” to patrons as free drinks. His YouTube breach was a Rip Through It episode from 10 March 2026.

Mathieson’s three Instagram videos (20 March and two on 6 April) were cut from the same cloth, the difference being his footage showed a purported win of around $29,000.

Every clip showed the Vegastars name, logo and web address alongside gameplay. There was also a $5,000 giveaway, funded by the operator and pitched off the back of the fuel price squeeze earlier this year, which is what put A Current Affair onto the story in April.

The audience they were selling to

The reach is the point. Robinson’s verified Instagram account sits at 102,000 followers, his talent agency lists him at 108,000 on TikTok, his personal YouTube channel has roughly 58,000 subscribers, and he has about 35,000 followers on X. The Rip Through It podcast channel on YouTube is smaller at 5,070 subscribers across 354 videos, but it is distributed through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud too.

mitch-robinson-instagram-102k.webp

Robinson’s verified Instagram account, captured 22 October 2026: 102K followers.

rip-through-it-youtube-5k.webp

The Rip Through It YouTube channel, captured 22 October 2026: 5.07k subscribers across 354 videos.

Put plainly: Vegastars bought direct access to a few hundred thousand footy-mad Australians, most of them in exactly the demographic the regulator worries about, for about $40,000 a month.

Who is Vegastars?

Not an Australian company. The ACMA traced the operator to Neptune Projects SRL, a limited liability company registered in Costa Rica, running under a gaming licence from the Tobique Gaming Commission (a First Nation in Canada). The ACMA formally warned the operator on 20 January 2026 and asked Australian ISPs to block the main site and three mirror domains in February 2026.

It did not matter. The ACMA’s own report says Vegastars “continues to be provided into the Australian market” and the regulator has had to request blocks on more alternative domains since. The whack-a-mole is the business model.

The laws, in plain English

This is the bit most punters never get told clearly, so here it is.

What’s legal online in Australia: betting on racing and sport (before the event starts) with a bookmaker licensed in an Australian state or territory, and lotteries licensed here.

What’s illegal for anyone to offer Australians online: pokies and slots, casino games like blackjack, roulette and poker, online scratchies, in-play betting on sport over the internet, and any betting or lottery service that isn’t licensed in Australia. That’s the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, and it has said this since 2001.

Who gets in trouble: the operator, and anyone who promotes them. There is no offence for the punter who logs on and spins. The law is aimed at the supply side.

What counts as promoting: anything that “gives publicity to” a banned service. Showing the logo. Reading out the URL. Streaming yourself playing. Running a giveaway for them. Linking to them in your bio.

“I didn’t know” doesn’t work: both players told the ACMA they didn’t realise Vegastars was prohibited. The regulator’s answer, in writing, was that the law doesn’t require proof the promoter knew. Breach is breach.

The penalties available: up to $65,520 per contravention for promoting, and up to $2,730,000 for “facilitating access”, which includes posting a hyperlink. Neither player was fined. Both got a formal warning, which is the regulator putting the industry on notice rather than reaching for the big stick.

And from 1 January 2027: licensed Australian bookies won’t be allowed to use current or former athletes, social media influencers or other “notable people” in their advertising at all. So the legal version of this gig is about to disappear too.

The numbers that should bother you

Whatever you think of a couple of ex-footballers taking a pay cheque, the leakage figures are the real story.

  • $3.9 billion lost by Australians to illegal offshore sites in 2024, up from $1.5 billion in 2019.

  • $5 billion projected by 2029.

  • 36% of all online gambling in Australia now goes offshore, up from 28% in 2019.

  • 26% of Australians’ online gambling spend is on online casino and pokies, products that are banned here and only available offshore.

  • 1 in 5 sports betting dollars and 1 in 7 racing dollars go to unlicensed operators.

  • $2.7 billion in taxes and racing and sport product fees expected to leak out between 2025 and 2029.

  • 50% of Australians who have gambled offshore did it while registered on BetStop, the national self-exclusion register.

  • Almost half of punters surveyed couldn’t tell whether a site was legal.

  • 1,822 illegal gambling and affiliate sites blocked by the ACMA since November 2019, and more than 230 operators have left the Australian market since 2017. Vegastars is still here.

One honest caveat: the $3.9 billion estimate comes from H2 Gambling Capital in a report commissioned by Responsible Wagering Australia, the lobby for licensed bookies. They have skin in the game. But H2 are the people everyone, including governments, lean on for this data, and nobody in the debate is arguing the trend is going the other way.

Why the ACMA cares, and why you should

Here is the regulator’s own list of what can go wrong when you deposit with an unlicensed site: they can let you deposit but not withdraw. They can pack up and move, and your balance goes with them. They can keep pulling money from your card after you stop playing. The site can get blocked overnight and you can’t even log in to see your account. And no Australian regulator or dispute body can do anything about any of it.

The Robinson clip was a bloke in a pub winning $800 and buying the bar a round. That is a very good advertisement. It is not a very good description of the product.

Over to you

So go on, tell us. You ever had a slap on an illegal casino? Ever run into any headaches getting paid out? What about big wins? Did the money actually land?

Let us hear more in the comments.

Sources