The Raiders group will take its opposition to the Barr government's casino poker machines policy to its more than 50,000 members, and will consider advertising at Raiders' games.
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Raiders group general manager Simon Hawkins attacked Labor's "backflipping" from its pre-election community gaming agenda, and confirmed on Saturday the group would not sell any of their machines to casino operator Aquis.
"We definitely won't be telling people how they should vote, but we'll be advising members of the consequences of these poker machines going to the casino," he said.
"The Raiders board hasn't discussed [game advertising]; it's something we'd certainly look at."
He said the impact on Canberra clubs of a casino with 200 poker machines, as endorsed by Chief Minister Andrew Barr on Friday, would be worse than the effect of the opening of the Star City casino in Sydney, which led to nearly half the clubs within 10 kilometres closing.
"A lot of our employees are not tertiary trained, there are limited opportunities to go elsewhere, and we are out in the suburbs where they live."
Mr Hawkins said the Raiders group had 55,000 members across its four ACT clubs, while the football club had about 15,000 members, including children.
"Prior to the last election the government made a promise to support the current community gaming model, where gambling machines are operated by the community and not-for-profit organisations, and within this electoral cycle we find they've completely backflipped on that."
Mr Hawkins said the Raiders clubs' revenue would be affected from day one of the casino changes, but the group would manage in at least the short and medium term.
He backed away from comments on November 30 that the group would halt its $18-million expansion of its Gungahlin club if the casino was allowed to install poker machines.
"At that point, the government was saying there would be imminent decisions on it," he said.
"In the meantime we've got a [development application] that has been passed there, and we have limitations about starting and finishing times on that. We're committed to doing that now."
The Canberra Raiders Group owns 528 poker machines, making it the third largest owner in the ACT after the Tuggeranong Rugby Union Group and the Canberra Southern Cross Group.
There are currently seven venues in the territory which have more than 200 machines, including the Raiders Gungahlin club, which has 258. Clubs which sell to the casino could reap $20,000 for each machine, or in some views more.
ClubsACT said clubs employed more than 2300 Canberrans and contributed more than $11 million a year to community organisations.
A spokeswoman for Mr Barr said the casino, which had its proposal for 500 machines rejected, still had a "long journey ahead of it to access poker machines", which have to come from the nearly 5000 already licensed to clubs.
"Canberra's is the only casino in Australia and New Zealand without poker machines and ultimately whether that changes is entirely in the clubs' hands," she said.
"If it can produce a satisfactory business case to pass the unsolicited bid process, completes all the necessary planning steps and completes the upgrade, supporting construction and hospitality jobs, then and only then would [it] be allowed to attempt to purchase up to 200 poker machines."
On Friday, Mr Barr said the government would continue its work to help clubs become less reliant on poker machines.
