About this app
What is Big Shots?
This was revealed through documents obtained by ABC and statements from ILGA chair Caroline Lamb on Monday.
Introduced in 1998, ClubGRANTS was designed to channel a share of gambling-linked profits from gaming clubs back into local communities. This includes health and welfare services as well as community development and sporting clubs.
According to the Gaming Machine Tax Act 2001, a tax rebate of up to 1.85% of a club’s gaming machine profits is made available to any registered club that records profits of over $1 million (US$715,000) during a tax year.
About Big Shots
Enforcement publicity may lack context, and some settlements may involve errors rather than systemic recklessness. But the sector cannot control how its opponents use these cases. It can only reduce the supply.
At a moment when the industry needs to persuade politicians that regulated gambling is capable of managing risk responsibly, repeated failures in long-established areas such as AML and safer gambling amount to political self-harm.
The Commission may sometimes load the gun, but operators keep providing the ammunition.
How to play Big Shots
Egypt’s gambling rules were written around physical venues. Law 8 of 2022 provides that “gambling games may not be practised in establishments except by non-Egyptians”. No licensing framework exists for online betting.
In October 2024 the then-prosecutor general ordered the freezing of e-wallets and the suspension of mobile lines used by betting agents. Separately, in February this year, officials said regulators were working with the telecoms authority and the media council towards blocking about 80% of betting applications by the end of that month.
Ahmed Badawi, who chairs the House communications committee, said in May that the government would amend the anti-cybercrime law to name online betting explicitly. Life imprisonment was discussed for the gravest offences. No bill number or text has been published.
