Tabcorp Holdings Limited (TAB) has been fined AU$2.7 million after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found it sent marketing emails and SMS messages to recipients who had already unsubscribed.
According to ACMA, TAB self-reported that between 31 March and 15 April 2025, it sent 217,687 marketing emails and SMS messages to 41,550 electronic addresses after recipients had already unsubscribed. ACMA later confirmed the messages breached subsection 16(1) of Australia’s Spam Act 2003.
ACMA also uncovered separate telemarketing breaches between February 2024 and June 2025, showing the compliance issues extended beyond email marketing. These included:
- 351 calls made to numbers on the Do Not Call Register without consent.
- 82 marketing calls made outside legally permitted calling hours.
- Nearly 4,000 calls that failed to properly identify TAB or explain the purpose of the call.
According to ACMA Authority Member Samantha Yorke, an unsubscribe request is a clear choice that every business must respect, which TAB did not.
If you are an email service provider, CRM, customer data platform, marketing agency, or manage email marketing, you should always check that:
- Unsubscribe requests are processed immediately. Google bulk email sending requirements recommend implementing a one-click unsubscribe in marketing emails.
- Suppression lists sync correctly across every connected marketing platform;
- Email, SMS and other marketing channels maintain separate consent preferences where required;
- Imported contact lists do not accidentally re-subscribe a user
- Marketing automations stop sending messages immediately after someone unsubscribes; and
- Your unsubscribe page is not broken.
If you want to learn more about the case, ACMA has published its investigation report PDFs on this page.
If you missed it, we also wrote about the New Email Tracking Pixels CNIL Rules.
