At 2am on Monday 13 April, Fox Sports’ main coverage of the 2026 Masters final round began in Australia. Fans could watch on television or stream through Kayo, following the tournament through the hours when most of the country was asleep.
Golf’s international calendar does not always make allowances for an Australian bedtime.
From 1 January 2027, those viewing hours will help determine which betting adverts can appear around the coverage. New federal restrictions will also change advertising on social platforms and stop wagering companies using professional athletes in their promotions.

Golf’s late nights still matter

For someone settling down to watch daytime golf, the new rules create a longer gap between betting promotions and the start of coverage.
Between 5am and 8.30pm, wagering adverts will be banned during live sport on television and online, including breaks in play. The restriction starts 15 minutes before the scheduled coverage and runs until five minutes after the event ends. Outside protected live-sport coverage, television channels will be limited to three wagering adverts in any hour during that daytime window.
Daytime broadcasts already have restrictions. The current general rule begins five minutes before play, so January extends the lead-in rather than introducing protection from scratch.
An overseas tournament watched overnight will still be different. Between 8.30pm and 5am, the new law prohibits betting adverts during play but allows them during certain stoppages in the sporting event. A weather delay can qualify; a broadcaster simply cutting to commercials while golfers continue playing does not create a break in the event.
That leaves room for betting advertising during an overnight golf session. The reforms do not amount to a round-the-clock ban.

The changes follow viewers onto their phones

Checking golf clips or tournament discussion on a social platform will bring another set of protections into play. Under the new general online rules, betting adverts can be shown only to logged-in adults whose age has been checked, with an option to turn those adverts off. The government has also legislated for a national advertising opt-out register, intended to save people having to make that choice separately across services.
Choosing not to see advertising is separate from excluding yourself from betting.
BetStop, Australia’s national self-exclusion register, already requires licensed operators to stop providing betting services once someone registers.
An October enforcement announcement concerning Picklebet’s BetStop breach described what happened when that protection failed: on 9 February, the company accepted bets from someone who had registered hours earlier. It closed the account later that day and paid a penalty of AUD 19,800. The January reforms increase the penalties available for breaches of those self-exclusion rules.

Some betting branding will remain

The familiar faces appearing in promotions are another target. Guidance published on 19 October by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, or ACMA, includes both current and former professional athletes in the advertising restrictions.
Retiring from tournament golf will not make a player eligible to front a betting campaign.
The rules also cover influencers, so the changes extend to sponsored content encountered away from a television broadcast.
Overseas pictures are harder to deal with than a commercial inserted by an Australian broadcaster. Advertising may already be visible beside the course or added digitally to the international feed. ACMA’s existing guidance tells broadcasters and streamers to seek a feed without gambling advertising.
Where that is unavailable, it expects efforts to remove or cover the adverts, potentially through technical changes or negotiations with the supplier. Exceptions exist, but the regulator expects evidence of what the broadcaster has done.
Even at Australian sporting venues, some sponsorship branding can survive January. The legislation protects certain arrangements made before the bill was introduced on 2 July 2026, provided they are not extended or altered to increase the advertising. Broadcasts showing those permitted displays are protected too. Those arrangements can continue until they expire, with a final deadline of 31 December 2031.