Although there are 13 casinos in Australia and six in New Zealand, the bulk of the activity at the Australasian Gaming Expo that opened today at the International Conference Centre in Darling Harbour, Sydney, for a three-day run concentrated on the clubs market.

Australia has 6,400 registered clubs alone, many of them large and luxurious non-profit-making venues for local communities; and gaming machines, generally known as poker machines or just pokies, provide much of the clubs’ income.

It will be their committee members filing through the doors of the AGE show, keen to see what the major manufacturers of slot machines and the support services can offer.  New South Wales alone has 1,300 clubs, 82 per cent of them offering gaming. Between all of the clubs in Australia, 13 million people are members, around half of the population. Around 170,000 of them find employment in the clubs business.

Hotels and pubs are also key outlets for gaming machines and representatives of that industry will also attend the show, together with the burgeoning sports betting business that finds a home in many of the pubs and hotels.

AGE is now the fourth largest casino show in the world, behind ICE, G2E and Macau.