Originally posted on 04/30/2015:

Yes Ewan, regardless of what the law says the bookie must do, if they don't and the regulators don't ensure they do there is of course a high risk that punters will lose their money again.

However, I am generally very comfortable with the situation in Australia, particularly those regulated by the NT Commission. The ACT of course has a bad history but I'm sure that following the SportAlive case they will have implemented improvements. Not that it is of any great value because, apart from the ACT TAB, I think there may only be one small bookie regulated by them. And you are correct that my experience in dealing with their NSW counterpart left me less than impressed. But that's not to say they aren't ensuring compliance with the segregated accounts and guarantee fund requirements of their legislation.

Other than SportsAlive I am not familiar with any other bookie in Australia going belly up. I think there was one in WA a few years back but I don't know how that worked out. There have been a couple of others which closed their doors but did pay out their clients. But no, I'm not aware of any where one could definitely say that the segregated accounts and government regulation saved the day for clients.

It is obviously true that there is always some risk but I think Australia is clearly ahead of anywhere else in the world in this sphere by having the legislation and government authorities monitoring compliance. Most of the online bookmakers here are large European owned entities. There are a few smaller local ones such as Classicbet who you probably need to do some research into before joining up with.

Of the smaller ones I have accounts with Topsport, Palmerbet, Crownbet and ClubAllSports.
Then also with the TAB (incl. Luxbet) and Tatts (or Ubet as from today) - safe as houses!
As well as the large foreign owned corporates, Sportsbet (Paddy Power) and Bet365.
The other large corporates which I'd also class as very safe but which don't let me bet with them are: Wm Hill, Ladbrokes and Unibet.