The latest data from the National Accounts shows that gambling losses reached a new, all-time high of $36 billion in the 2025-26 financial year. Losses went up $1.2b more than in 2024-25, which is the biggest increase in three years.
Thu 10 Sep 2026 01.00 AEST
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The latest data from the National Accounts shows that gambling losses reached a new, all-time high of $36 billion in the 2025-26 financial year. Losses went up by $1.2b more than in 2024-25, which is the biggest increase in three years.
Figure 1: Gambling losses jackpotted to a new record high in 2025-26 of $36 billion
Source: ABS (2026) Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, Table 8, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/national-accounts/australian-national-accounts-national-income-expenditure-and-product/latest-release
On a per-person basis, Australians gamble more, and lose more, than people in any other country in the world. As the biggest overall gamblers in the world, it is perhaps not surprising that Australians are among the biggest online gamblers in the world.
In 2021, on a per-person basis, each Australian lost $332 to online gambling, compared to $276 in Sweden and $43 in the United States.
The share of Australia’s adult population that participates in online gambling increased from 8% in 2017 to 33% in 2025, which means that online gambling is a major contributor to the growth in Australia’s total gambling losses.
In 2024, engagement in online gambling surpassed engagement in in-house gambling (for the first time).
Almost one in three Australian teenagers gamble before they turn 18. That’s almost 600,000 underaged gamblers, which is enough to fill the MCG nine times over.
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In August, the government passed a bill to restrict the amount of online gambling advertising that Australians see. The new law will see gambling advertisements limited to three per hour, banned during live sport, and banned from sports stadiums and team jerseys.
Online platforms and streaming services will be required to introduce an ‘opt-out’ feature that will allow people to choose not to see ads for gambling – if they can figure out how to work it (SBS already has the feature, but 0.2 per cent of people are able to find it).
The bill represents the government’s response to the 2023 Murphy Review into the harms caused by online gambling, which called for a full ban on gambling advertisements to be phased in over three years. If that had happened, gambling ads would now be a thing of the past.
Australia has lost over $110 billion dollars to gambling since the Murphy Review was released. Polling shows that about three in four Australians would support a total ban on gambling advertising.
In 2023-24, five of the largest online wagering companies won $5.4 billion from Australian gamblers, but paid $0.1 billion in company tax. Three of them paid no company tax at all. The Murphy Review recommended the establishment of a national regulator, and for a national harm minimisation strategy to be funded through a levy on online gambling companies. Neither of these measures were included in the government’s recently passed bill.
The Murphy Review identified online gambling as a major public health issue. Without a national approach to this growing problem, Australia’s losses will continue to mount.
Want to see a ban on ads for online gambling? Sign our petition here.
