Poker machines make more than twice the profit in casinos than clubs, a new study has found.
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Each casino poker machine in a casino in Australia brings in an average of $128,600, compared to club and hotel machines which bring in an average $59,400, according to the study of casinos from the University of Adelaide.
The report also found that casino revenue is booming everywhere but Canberra. Per-capita spending at the Canberra casino is just $64 a head, compared with $262 across the country. The Canberra figure has plunged since a peak in 1994-95 of $282.
The research comes as the government, clubs and the casino are locked in a heated debate about whether poker machines should be allowed in the casino, the only one in the country where pokies are banned. The ACT government is considering a casino request for 500 poker machines, breaking the stranglehold of clubs on the most popular form of gambling.
The report, commissioned by the national agency Gambling Research Australia, found that casinos have 6.6 per cent of the country's poker machines, but make 13.3 per cent of pokie revenue.
But it cautions that the picture is complex, and bigger venues or greater income from each poker machine does not necessarily mean greater harm from problem gambling.
"Evidence that gamblers spend more on each pokie in larger venues is not evidence that large venues are more dangerous than local clubs/hotels," it says. "It may simply be that machines operate for greater number of hours and casinos have a much greater number of patrons. However, it may also be that casinos are permitted to host unrestricted machines that do have the capacity to increase players' losses in a given period."
Casinos that were focused more on poker machines and on the local gambling market than on table games might pose a bigger risk to the community than the country's biggest casinos, which target VIP and international gambling, it says.
Gamblers spent $4.08 billion in the country's 13 casinos in 2011-12, a figure that is rising steadily. But the Canberra casino is lagging behind.
In the ACT, casino gambling spending is static, at 8.3 per cent of total gambling spending, the lowest rate in the country by far. It has sat at about the same rate for 15 years, after falling from 11.7 per cent of market share in 1997.
The much weaker performance in Canberra is explained by the ban on poker machines, the small size of the casino and the smaller population.
Casino spending as a proportion of household disposable income is the lowest in Australia. The national average is 0.45 per cent of household disposable income; in the ACT, the figure is 0.07 per cent.
In contrast, spending on poker machines in clubs has increased an average of 1.8 per cent a year in real terms (after inflation) over two decades, from $130 million in 1993 to $182 million in 2012.
The figures go some way to explain why the new owners of Canberra Casino, Aquis, are so keen to be allowed poker machines.
It is clear from NSW that the fears of Canberra clubs that they will lose gambling income if the casino is allowed poker machines are well founded. In NSW, the number of poker machines in clubs and hotels is down 7350, or 10 per cent, in a decade.
While Aquis makes much of its plans to attract international visitors, the report finds that 80 per cent of visitors to Australia's 13 casinos are from the same city or state as the casino. Thirteen per cent are from interstate and just 7 per cent from overseas. Sydney, Perth and the Gold Coast casinos attract the biggest proportion of overseas visitors, while several casinos are almost 100 per cent dependent on the local markets for their gambling revenue, and casinos are essentially in competition with local hotels and clubs for the gambling dollar, the report says.
