SA Hosting Offshore Lottery Service

[Danielsun]

Hello Everyone,

I'm currently in a partnership of a company who is hoping to offer a blockchain based lottery system in the future.

We don't want to break any laws though so there's some things we need to understand.

We will not be offering our services to anyone in Australia, in order to purchase tickets customers will need to put in their country. If their country is Australia they will not be allowed to purchase tickets - at some point in time we'll be hiring lawyers and more developers to make us as compliant as possible.

At this point in time we believe it is legal under Australian law if the company is registered overseas and does not offer it's services in Australia, even if the company is owned by Australians.

However, right now the company is not registered overseas and registering overseas will be a huge headache for us, we'll do this eventually but we're wondering, is it legal for an Australian based company to offer a lottery service exclusively to overseas customers?

Also, are there any other legal problems with this type of service?

If it is illegal how can we make it legal?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[Danielsun]

Nobody knows the answer to this question?

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

You’re asking on a rather niche, and complicated, area of law. You’re also involving multiple and unknown jurisdictions. In other words, I doubt you’re going to find someone who will give you a ‘free answer’.

That being said I did hear a comment in passing the other day about wanting to shut down this type of operation in Australia, but I’m not sure if it was operating out of Australia or into Australia.

 

[Danielsun]

Hi Rob,

Thank you for the response.

I understand, I kind of figured we would need to hire some lawyers at some stage though it's early days yet.

I do have a question though, did you happen to hear whether the operation being spoken about was a blockchain/crypto lottery? Or just a lottery?

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

I'm not sure. It was just a headline snippet.