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Australia’s communications regulator has launched an inquiry into The Walt Disney Company’s flagship streaming service after gambling commercials were broadcast during ESPN sports content and streamed on Disney+.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)’s move comes as the body voiced its concern that Disney+ is exploiting a potential “gambling ad loophole” in the country’s strict gambling advertising rules.
special daytime exemption to run gambling ads
The issue reportedly revolves around the ESPN feed on Disney+. Disney’s sports content brand was formerly and exclusively available to Australians on Foxtel and Fetch, and was given a special daytime exemption to run gambling ads because of ESPN’s low audience share.
Enter Disney+, which in March broke the duopoly and began streaming ESPN live sports on its platform for the first time in Australia and New Zealand.
Disney+ argues that it is exempt from the ban forbidding gambling ads from 5am to 8:30pm, claiming it is merely simulcasting the same ESPN feed that Foxtel and Fetch share. The ACMA, however, doubts that Disney+, with around 3.3 million Australian subscribers, can justify a low audience share.
The ACMA outlined that the low audience exemption loophole was authorized to avoid applying “two sets of rules” to identical content, not to allow “broader exposure to restricted advertising.”
In a statement, the regulator said it was “concerned about Disney+’s practice” and was urgently seeking from the streaming brand information on whether its processes “align with community expectations, regardless of its interpretation of the applicable rules.”
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