Keno online in Australia: what an Australian reader can actually do

Updated September 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Online keno sits in a strange corner of the Australian market. The game itself is legal — played in pubs, clubs and casinos across the country under state and territory licences — but offering it online to anyone in Australia is not. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 closes that door, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority has spent the past several years walking up to it, knocking, and listing the names of the operators on the other side. This page lays out what that means in practice: which sites the ACMA has warned, what kind of licence those sites actually carry, and where a reader who wants to play keno for real money is meant to go.

23 September 2026 · Data checked against the ACMA register of formal warnings and blocking requests

The legal shape of the Australian market

Australia does not license online casino games. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, tightened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino games, online pokies or in-play betting to a person physically in Australia. No state or territory issues a licence for them. The product on the other side of the world — an offshore site holding a Curaçao or Anjouan seal — is not regulated by anyone with reach over an Australian punter’s money.

What Australia does licence, and has for decades, is wagering on races and sport placed before the event, lotteries, and keno. In practice the wagering side is regulated by the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which oversees 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers — Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes among them. The commission is small enough that it has no full-time staff and meets once a month in Darwin. That is the licensed side of the fence. Everything that calls itself an online casino, including every site on the ACMA warning list, sits on the other one.

A useful first question for any reader is therefore not “which casino is best?” but “what am I actually being offered?” If the answer involves an offshore licence and a deposit in cryptocurrency, the offer is one the ACMA has spent years trying to make unreachable from an Australian IP. If the answer is a state-licensed keno terminal at a pub, club or casino, the offer is exactly what the law was written to permit.

How the ACMA enforces the line

The enforcement side has three working parts: formal warnings, ISP blocking requests, and the slow drain of operators leaving the market. The Australian Communications and Media Authority issues a formal warning when it has reasonable grounds to believe an offshore operator is providing prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians. That warning is published on the ACMA’s own site and is the trigger that, if ignored, leads to a blocking request to Australian internet service providers.

The numbers from the ACMA’s own reporting, as carried by industry coverage in June 2026, are heavy. A total of 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites had been blocked since the first blocking request in November 2019. More than 230 unlicensed gambling services had left the Australian market since enforcement was strengthened in 2017. In the round reported on 26 June 2026 alone, the ACMA asked Australian ISPs to block 12 more sites: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino.

H2 Gambling Capital’s 2025 report, cited in the same coverage, estimated that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels fell from 74% in 2021 to 64%. Those are the stakes the IGA was written to fight.

What an offshore licence is worth from Australia

A Curaçao or Anjouan seal on an offshore site is a real licence in the jurisdiction that issued it. It is not a licence in Australia. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 targets the provider, not the player, so an Australian punter who opens an account and loses is not personally at risk of prosecution. The cost is everything that sits around the wager itself: no Australian consumer protection, no local complaints body, no recourse if a withdrawal is refused, and a real chance the site gets blocked mid-session with a balance on it.

This is the asymmetry the ACMA warning list captures. Every brand in the table below has been named in a formal warning because the ACMA judged it to be offering prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians. None of them is licensed to do so.

Payment rules that bind even the licensed side

Since 11 June 2024, Australian-licensed online wagering operators have been banned from accepting credit cards, credit-related products and digital currency. Penalties run up to $234,750 for operators. Legal deposit routes for licensed wagering are debit card, bank transfer, PayID, Osko and BPAY.

The rule applies only to Australian-licensed operators. An offshore casino is not bound by it and will happily take a credit card or a Bitcoin deposit. That is itself a marker — a site asking an Australian for either is operating outside the Australian rules and is exactly the kind of site the ACMA has been warning.

Responsible gambling: what is actually connected

The responsible gambling framework in Australia was built for licensed operators and reaches only them. The two anchors are BetStop and the National Gambling Helpline.

BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, went live in August 2023. A punter who registers with BetStop is excluded from every Australian-licensed online and phone wagering service for the period they choose, from three months up to a permanent exclusion. The exclusion is enforced on the operator’s side — an attempt to open or use an account at a bound service is refused.

The qualifier matters: an offshore casino is not connected to BetStop. A reader who has registered with BetStop because they wanted to stop will not be stopped at an offshore site, and the ACMA’s own enforcement cannot extend the exclusion across the border.

The National Gambling Helpline, 1800 858 858, is free, 24/7 and accepts chat sessions at Gambling Help Online. It is the right number for a reader who is reading this page because gambling has become a problem rather than a hobby, regardless of which side of the IGA the betting happens on.

The crypto angle

A reader who searches for “bitcoin keno casino” or “crypto casino keno” is asking about a narrow subset of offshore sites — the ones that take deposits in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency and do not require the kind of identity checks a licensed operator must perform.

The mechanics are simple. The site holds a licence in a jurisdiction with no Australian reach. The deposit is in crypto, which means it is outside the credit-card ban that binds Australian-licensed operators. The wager is on a game the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits being offered to anyone in Australia. From the reader’s point of view the experience looks identical to playing at a licensed site; from the law’s point of view it is not.

The risk profile is the same as any other offshore site and then some. Crypto deposits add two layers: the wallet and the exchange both sit outside any Australian regulator, and the ACMA’s blocking power does not extend to a wallet. There is no consumer protection, no chargeback path, and the balance can be stranded when the site is blocked or renamed. H2 Gambling Capital’s 2025 estimate of A$3.9 billion a year in losses to illegal sites includes whatever is passing through these wallets.

How keno actually plays

Keno is a numbers game. In its modern form a player chooses up to 20 numbers from a field of 1 to 80. The house then draws 20 numbers, either by a mechanical ball machine or by a certified random number generator, and pays out according to how many of the player’s chosen numbers match the draw. The longer the ticket — the more numbers a player picks — the bigger the payout for a perfect hit and the longer the odds.

The game is older than the casino. Tradition credits Han-dynasty strategist Zhang Liang with inventing keno during the Chu-Han Contention, with early ticket sheets printed using the first 80 characters of the Thousand Character Classic rather than numerals. The version played in Australian pubs and clubs today, under state and territory keno licences, runs on roughly the same mechanical idea: pick numbers, watch a draw, collect on hits.

Live keno and automated keno differ mainly in ceremony. A live keno draw is run by a person who calls numbers as a ball machine or blower selects them; an automated draw runs the same process without a caller. The odds, the paytable and the house edge do not change between the two. The thing that changes between venues is the paytable itself.

House edge comparison

The reason returns vary so widely between venues is the paytable. A venue that pays less for the same number of hits is keeping more of every dollar wagered. Wizard of Odds’ survey of live keno in Las Vegas found returns between 65% and 80% depending on the paytable, which is the same edge range written as a return — the difference between two venues is the paytable a player is sitting at.

Hitting all 20 numbers on a 20-spot keno ticket has odds of about 1 in 3.5 quintillion. The prize is large enough to advertise. The probability is small enough to be the reason the house edge exists at all.

State-by-state: who runs keno

Keno in Australia is a state and territory matter. The licences are granted and renewed under each jurisdiction’s own gambling statute.

In Queensland, Keno (QLD) Pty Ltd is the exclusive keno licensee, regulated by the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation under the Keno Act 1996, the Keno Regulation 2007 and the Keno Rule 2010. New South Wales granted its keno operator and product licence a 28-year extension to 1 April 2050, with the joint licensees agreeing to pay the state more than A$230 million — a A$25 million upfront fee plus annual licence duty. Victoria issued 20-year keno licences from 15 April 2022 under the Gambling Regulation Act 2003 to Keno (VIC) Pty Ltd and Lottoland Australia Pty Ltd, regulated by the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission. Lottoland Australia renamed itself KenoGo Pty Ltd on 9 September 2025.

These are the legal keno products available in Australia. They run through licensed pubs, clubs and casinos, not through offshore websites.

Landscape

The table below lists brands the ACMA has named in formal warnings for offering prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians. It is not a ranking and not a recommendation; it is the register of who has been on the wrong end of an ACMA action, with the operator the warning named and the date it was published.

Every entry in that table is the same story: an offshore operator, a licence in a non-Australian jurisdiction, an ACMA formal warning, and the IGA’s prohibition that the warning does not lift. The licensing note research emphasises — that online casino games cannot be licensed anywhere in Australia, whatever licence the site displays — applies to every brand on the list. None of them is an Australian-licensed casino. None of them can become one.

Why the blocking request rate matters

The arithmetic behind the blocking rate is straightforward. From November 2019, when the ACMA issued its first blocking request, to the round reported on 26 June 2026, the regulator asked Australian ISPs to block 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites. That is the running total research gives.

Treating the six-and-a-bit years between those dates as the window, the blocking request rate lands somewhere in the range of about 200 to 270 new sites blocked per year on average — a band rather than a single figure, because the ACMA publishes its blocking rounds irregularly and the running total mixes sites, affiliate pages and mirror domains in a way that does not split cleanly by month. What is certain is the direction: more sites are being added than are leaving. The pace itself is the point. A market the regulator is blocking at this rate is not a market in retreat.

What a formal warning actually does

A formal warning from the ACMA is the first step on the enforcement ladder. It puts the operator on notice, in writing, that the ACMA considers it to be providing prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians. It is published on the ACMA’s website and stays there. If the operator does not comply — by geo-blocking Australian users, withdrawing the offering, or shutting the Australian-facing product — the ACMA can move to a blocking request, which asks Australian ISPs to make the site unreachable from an Australian IP.

The warning is not a court order and is not, on its own, a reason an Australian reader cannot reach the site. Many of the brands on the list are still resolvable from inside Australia at the time of writing, and an offshore operator can rotate domains faster than the ACMA can publish them. The signal is the direction of travel: the regulator has judged the offering prohibited and is acting on that judgement.

The operator-by-operator picture

The next sections walk through each brand the ACMA has named in a formal warning over online casino games available to Australians. The point of each entry is not to recommend the site but to lay out exactly what the ACMA said, when it said it and what the operator named in the warning is — because that operator is who an Australian punter is actually dealing with when an account is opened.

RocketPlay

The ACMA’s most recent formal warning over RocketPlay was issued in March 2026 to Pulsup Ltd, the operator behind RocketPlay. Earlier, in May 2022, the ACMA had already named Dama N.V. over RocketPlay among six casino brands, alongside Bambet, Dazard, Level Up, Wild Tornado and Cobra Casinos.

Two operators across four years is the ACMA’s working pattern with this brand: name the current operator in the most recent warning, and treat the earlier operator as part of the file. Neither operator changes what the warning covers. Online casino games cannot be licensed in Australia, so RocketPlay is, from an Australian reader’s point of view, an unlicensed offering held out under a non-Australian licence. Research carries no keno-specific coverage for the brand, which means there is nothing about its keno product to evaluate.

Level Up Casino

Level Up Casino was named in the May 2022 formal warning to Dama N.V. alongside the five other Dama brands. The brand is listed on BGaming as a venue carrying BGaming content, which is the closest the research comes to a substantive data point about what the site offers. That is a listings-only signal: it says the brand appears on a publisher’s site, not that the publisher has reviewed it.

The qualifier from the ACMA is the same as for the rest of the Dama brands. The site holds a non-Australian licence and offers online casino games to Australian users. The brand’s own marketing language does not undo that.

Woo Casino

Woo Casino received a formal ACMA warning in March 2025, with Dama N.V. named as the operator. Research carries no other keno-specific coverage of the brand.

Woo Casino’s appearance in this list is part of the wider ACMA push against Dama N.V. across 2025, which included the Spirit Casino warning two months later. Two warnings on the same operator in the same calendar year is a regulator making clear that the first warning did not produce compliance.

Spirit Casino

The ACMA issued a formal warning over Spirit Casino in May 2025, with Dama N.V. again named as the operator. The brand is otherwise unrepresented in research. As with Woo Casino, the warning fits the broader pattern of ACMA action against the Dama group across 2024 and 2025, and the same licensing caveat applies.

National Casino

National Casino was named in a formal warning issued in July 2025, with Consolutetish S.R.L. as the operator the ACMA named. The brand is listed on en.wikipedia.org — a listings-only signal that the brand appears on the encyclopedia’s coverage of the operator, without any review attached.

Consolutetish S.R.L. was named by the ACMA over two brands in the same July 2025 round: National Casino and Bizzo Casino. The pairing matters because it points at a single operator running more than one Australian-facing property and being called out for both at once.

Bizzo Casino

Bizzo Casino was named in the same July 2025 formal warning as National Casino, with Consolutetish S.R.L. named as the current operator. The brand had already been the subject of an earlier 2022 formal warning issued to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V.

Two warnings, three operators and four years is the file on this brand. The current operator is Consolutetish S.R.L.; the earlier one was TechSolutions in its Cypriot and Curaçao forms. The licensing status has not changed across that span: the product is the same, the prohibition is the same, and the ACMA’s view of it has not moved.

Ignition Casino

The ACMA issued a formal warning over Ignition Casino in July 2025, with Bamboo Media named as the operator. Research carries no other coverage of the brand. The warning follows the same shape as the rest of the 2025 list: an offshore operator offering online casino games to Australians, judged prohibited by the regulator, and published as a warning on the ACMA site.

Instant Casino

Instant Casino received a formal warning in February 2025, with EOD Code SRL named as the operator. The brand is the earliest entry in the 2025 ACMA campaign against the operators on this list. Research carries no other substantive coverage of the brand, so the warning is the entire file.

Jackbit

The ACMA’s most recent action on this list for Jackbit came in April 2026, with Ryker B.V. named as the operator. The brand sat alongside CasinOK in the same formal warning. Research carries no other coverage of the brand, so the warning is again the whole file. Jackbit is one of the brands on this list whose marketing emphasises cryptocurrency deposits, which puts it inside the crypto keno search lane as much as it sits in the standard offshore casino lane.

Casino Intense

Casino Intense was named in a formal warning issued in April 2025, with Sterplay Holding Ltd named as the operator. The brand is listed on three sources in research: ABC, acma.gov.au and Crown Melbourne — all listings-only signals, none of them a substantive review.

The presence of Crown Melbourne in that list is incidental — Crown Melbourne is a licensed Australian casino, and its appearance in the Casino Intense listings most likely reflects a news mention or a comparison article, not a partnership.

Sky Crown

The ACMA issued a formal warning to Hollycorn N.V. over Sky Crown and Blue Leo, with the warning published in September 2022. Sky Crown is the earliest of the brands currently on the ACMA list that research names. Research carries no other coverage of the brand, so the warning is the entire file, and the licensing caveat is the same.

The lawful alternative for a keno player in Australia

For a reader who reached this page wanting to play keno and is now weighing the cost of doing so at an unlicensed offshore site against the cost of going to a licensed venue, the practical answer is straightforward. Keno is available legally in Australia through the state and territory operators named earlier — Keno (QLD) Pty Ltd in Queensland, the joint NSW licensees, Keno (VIC) Pty Ltd and KenoGo Pty Ltd in Victoria — and through the licensed pubs, clubs and casinos those operators supply. The product runs on terminals in venues, not through offshore websites.

What this page cannot honestly offer is a recommendation for an offshore site to take its place. The ACMA’s warning list is the ACMA’s own argument that the offering is prohibited, and the IGA is the statute the regulator is acting under. A reader who chooses an offshore site anyway is choosing a product the regulator has judged to be unlawful to offer to them, and is doing so with no Australian consumer protection if the site refuses a withdrawal or disappears. The lawful alternative is the licensed keno terminal at a venue, where the product is the same game and the consumer protection is the entire state-licensing framework behind it.

What changes on 1 January 2027

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 19 August 2026. Its advertising and inducement measures commence on 1 January 2027. That is law with a start date, not yet in force on a 2026 page. The bill targets advertising and inducement rather than the underlying prohibition on offering online casino games to Australians, so it does not change the legal shape of the market described above. What it changes is the advertising that licensed and unlicensed operators can do around it, beginning on the date named.

For an Australian reader, the practical effect of the bill is not on this page. The shape of the market — licensed keno on the one side, the ACMA warning list on the other — is the same now as it has been since 2017.

Closing the picture

The Australian keno market has two halves. One is the licensed state and territory keno product, played in pubs, clubs and casinos under keno-specific statutes, with consumer protection sitting behind the licence. The other is the offshore market the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits, and that the ACMA enforces through formal warnings, ISP blocking requests and a running total of 1,751 blocked sites since November 2019.

The brands on the ACMA warning list sit in the second half. The licence those sites display, in Curaçao, Anjouan or elsewhere, is a licence in the issuing jurisdiction and nothing else. An Australian reader cannot, on the evidence of the ACMA’s own list, end up at one of those sites through any route the regulator has approved.

For a reader who wants to play keno, the licensed terminal at a venue is the answer. For a reader who is comparing offshore brands, the ACMA register of formal warnings is the most useful single page on the regulator’s site, and the table above is the relevant slice of it. For a reader who has been reading this page because gambling has become a problem rather than a choice, the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 is free, 24/7, and reachable through Gambling Help Online.

Frequently asked questions

What house edge does keno typically carry compared with other casino games?

Keno carries one of the highest house edges of any common casino game. Wizard of Odds puts the edge at 25% to 29% across surveyed paytables, and Wikipedia’s keno article gives a range from under 4% to over 35% online and 20% to 40% in person. By comparison, baccarat sits at 1.06% on the Banker bet and blackjack with optimal strategy is around 0.28% under liberal Las Vegas Strip rules. The gap is the reason keno returns vary so much between venues.

Is keno available at licensed pubs and clubs in Australia, not just casinos?

Yes. Keno is one of the gambling products that can be offered legally in Australia through state- and territory-licensed operators, including Keno (QLD) Pty Ltd in Queensland, the joint NSW licensees, Keno (VIC) Pty Ltd and KenoGo Pty Ltd in Victoria. The terminals run in licensed pubs, clubs and casinos rather than through offshore websites.

Is it legal for an online casino to offer keno to players in Australia?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, strengthened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, prohibits offering online casino games, online pokies or in-play betting to a person in Australia. The ACMA enforces that prohibition through formal warnings and blocking requests. The product remains unlawful to offer regardless of any non-Australian licence the operator displays.

How does live keno differ from an automated keno draw?

A live keno draw is run by a person who calls numbers as a ball machine or blower selects them; an automated draw runs the same process through a random number generator without a caller. The odds, paytable and house edge are identical between the two. The thing that changes between venues is the paytable itself, which is why returns range from 65% to 80% across surveyed live keno venues.

Can keno be played with a Bitcoin deposit at an offshore site?

Yes, in the sense that an offshore casino will accept a Bitcoin deposit and offer keno to an Australian reader. The offering sits inside the prohibition the IGA enforces, however: the ACMA has acted against offshore operators for offering prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians, and BetStop’s exclusion does not extend to an offshore site. The credit-card ban on Australian-licensed wagering, which includes digital currency, applies to the licensed side only and does not bind the offshore casino. The balance can be stranded if the site is blocked.

Created by the ”Crypto Casino Hub AU” editorial team.