Australia is at a political and commercial crossroads.
We are grateful to Ross Ferrar for his masterly dissection of the current maze of politics surrounding gaming machines in both Australia and New Zealand. He rightly refers to that region as having a succession of paradoxes. There is no greater one than the structure of its machine industry – politics aside.
The bulk of the machines are in the street market, in pubs and clubs, the strongest sector of which is the latter. Australia has its 13 casinos and New Zealand another six, but there are many thousands of casino slots in the pubs and clubs market.
Unlike many other countries, Australia and New Zealand’s market for machines in the streets is largely supplied by the recognised major slots manufacturers, Ainsworth, Aristocrat, IGT, Konami, Aruze, Star Games, Global and Spielo International. There are nearly 100,000 of those slots in the state of New South Wales alone and a total of double that in the entire country, while New Zealand has 21,000. They don’t call them slots, of course; as the tradition was for the symbols to be playing cards, they became known as ‘poker machines’ or simply ‘pokies’.
The ‘hotels’ market in that region is in fact one of pubs, and while this is a significant market, the largest single sector in terms of income is in clubs. These are establishments for drinking, relaxation and gambling that are open only to members. They may be ex-military personnel and their families, or simply social clubs, but the key to it is that you have to become a member.
In Australia, the market in pokies is principally in the eastern states, because Western Australia does not permit them outside of casinos – and there is only one casino, in Perth. Australians do not warrant the oft-used accusation that they are the world’s most inveterate gamblers. Statistics show that the country only has 2.4 per cent of the nearly eight million slots in the world. Additionally, New South Wales, with half of the country’s machines, has a 6.7 million population, while Las Vegas with double the number of slots has a population of only 2.5 million, which calculates that NSW has 15 machines per capita while Nevada has 81.
Machines in pubs total 100,000. The number in each pub is dependent upon the state and what the individual licence permits. The majority of the rest are in the clubs, which can be huge and elaborate locations. These non-profit organisations provide amazing facilities for their members and can afford to do so as all of the machine income is ploughed back into the location. The standards of food, décor and facilities for members is five-star.
This feature can be read in full in the July 2012 issue of InterGaming magazine.
