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Tabcorp Wagering Pty Ltd was fined $1 million by the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission for failing to comply with two Commission directives issued during their investigation into Tabcorp’s major systems outage at the 2020 Spring Racing Carnival.
Tabcorp was fined the highest amount ever by the Commission for failing to follow directions from the Commission to provide information regarding the outage that left Tabcorp’s Wagering and Beting System (WBS), which was unavailable for about 36 hours.
Tabcorp’s behavior was deemed unacceptable by Commission Chair Fran Thorn. “We won’t tolerate licensees who aren’t forthcoming or cooperative during the Commission investigation.
Tabcorp failed to provide us with the information we needed about its business continuity and disaster-recovery capabilities. Tabcorp’s failures to comply with the directions has led to today’s fine.
All entities that we regulate, no matter their size, have an obligation to communicate openly and honestly with the Commission. They must also follow its legally issued directives. We will not tolerate any attempts to frustrate or impede our investigations.
Tabcorp’s WBS experienced a major failure on Saturday, 7th November 2020. The Wagering and Betting Licence and Agreement requires that the WBS be available continuously. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, which was the predecessor to the VGCCC, began investigating the outage.
Tabcorp was issued the directions after it failed to provide the regulator with adequate information regarding the outage. Tabcorp’s behavior during the investigation, and its response to the instructions, affected the Commission’s capability to understand and be confident that the outage would not occur again.
The Commission determined Tabcorp failed to comply with the first directive because it did not provide a response which — either in form or substance — verified that the WBS disaster recovery and business continuity arrangements, established after the outage, were “fit for purpose”, to meet the performance requirement of “continuously available”. Tabcorp failed to comply with the first direction because it submitted a report that was compliant four months past the deadline.
The maximum penalty for violating Commission directives is $9,087,000.
