How Facebook bots tried to lure young men to Tabcorp-backed gambling app
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“All advertisers that promote online gambling and gaming are required to follow local applicable laws and get authorisation from Meta ahead of commencing advertising,” they said.
“We’ve removed these pages for violating our policies.”
A network of referrers
Dabble was founded at the start of the pandemic by two entrepreneurs who built the app as a so-called “social betting” company, hoping to appeal to a generation of younger gamblers who liked to post and share tips with friends on Twitter and WhatsApp group chats.
The company’s rapid growth caught the eye of Australia’s biggest gambling firm, Tabcorp, with the ASX-listed company investing $33 million for a 20 per cent stake in the start-up last month, valuing it at $150 million.
The company has told multiple press outlets that it has signed up more than 150,000 users. But behind Dabble’s success is an Albury-based company called LRI Media, which ran Facebook pages and chatbots that swarmed users with messages asking them to sign up to various gambling services.
LRI Media funnelled users primarily to Dabble, but also sent others to various start-up betting services. According to two gaming industry sources, so-called “betting affiliates” like LRI Media can make up to 30 per cent of the lifetime losses of each person they refer, meaning they have lucrative incentives to find new customers on different platforms.
According to company filings, Dabble’s co-founders are the men behind LRI Media’s parent company LRI Group: Jonathan Robin and David Robin.
A spokesperson said the duo run Dabble and LRI Group as an “arms-length partnership” and claimed both men have no involvement in the commercial discussions or day-to-day executions of campaigns.
Broken gambling laws
In May, the NSW gaming regulator found the two companies had broken gambling laws around inducing people to join the gambling service.
According to a document from the NSW Office of Liquor and Gaming seen by this masthead, Dabble and LRI Group had faced an audit from the regulator and were in non-compliance with regulations around inducing people to sign up to gambling services.
A spokesperson for the Office of Liquor and Gaming said the companies faced no financial penalty or sanction, but received a warning. He said the regulator did not believe the Facebook bots breached current laws around inducing customers.
The activities of both Tabcorp-backed Dabble and LRI Media reveal how the next generation of gambling companies intend to weaponise Facebook ads, chatbots and videos to find new customers.
Questions remain about how the companies operate and how many other pages they run.
Once user followed “Roughie Kings 2022″ or “The Shark”, bots began sending them private messages, hawking gambling services and linking them to sign-up pages.
“Hey [redacted] it’s Jimmy again! Not to be a pest or anything but I need to let you know that spots in the VIP Kings Club are limited and filling fast thanks to the hot run the King has been on lately,” read one message.
Another read: “The Shark model survives off our Dabble partnership and that’s how we can keep operating for free. We think it’s a great system (smiley face emoji) ... If you want to get involved, you can do so below (Make sure you use the promo code “TS22″!)”
The messages included Facebook buttons to sign up to gambling services like Dabble. Once users sign up, including going through the process of depositing money into newly created accounts, LRI Media’s pages share the “free tips” to users within the app.
During the Spring Racing carnival, both pages have been sending dozens of private messages to those following the pages. Users can click a button marked “not interested”, but hours later the messages from the bots continue.
Other pages with unidentifiable owners have begun copying the company’s tactics. Pages with names like “Henry’s NBA tips”, “King of the Roughies” and “Free AFL tips” have bought up Facebook ads promising free tips to users.
When users click the ads, Facebook chatbots begin sending messages that suggest they sign up to Dabble.
A Shaw thing
In April, Dabble appeared to take things a step further. A low-fi video featuring retired AFL star Heath Shaw was posted in the group of a popular men’s Facebook page called “Blokes Advice”.
“Since I’ve finished my AFL career, I’ve been doing a little work with a company called Dabble, the quickest growing online bookmaker in Australia,” Shaw said, sporting a company hat.
“Yeah, they’re a bit different, the combination of Twitter, Sportsbet and WhatsApp groups. You can jump on and copy tipsters like myself, I’ve got 45,000 followers already, which is ten times what I got on Instagram.”
With more than 200 thousand followers, Blokes Advice claims to be a “digital shed” where male Facebook users gather to talk about a range of issues, including depression, anxiety and suicide.
Posting the video on the page set off some Blokes Advice followers, who were shocked the administrators of a so-called mental health page would partner with a gambling company.
“Im no Einstein but gambling problems account for alot of mental health issue’s these day ... great work selling out to these type’s of things (sic),” read one of the top comments. “Gambling takes food of the table for already struggling families. Why promote this shit (sic),” another read.
One gambling insider likened the Dabble-Blokes Advice video to someone marketing bottles of vodka to people leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
Asked about Dabble’s tactics, Tabcorp referred the Financial Review to Dabble itself.
Dabble claimed the company was approached by Blokes Advice and that during its “due diligence” found it wasn’t explicitly a support group. The company completed a three-month commercial agreement with the Facebook page earlier this year.
For Shaw, the star of Dabble’s Facebook video, it was just the beginning. The former footy player now stars in Dabble’s advertising and owns equity in the firm, according to company records.
