The Department of Business and Consumer Services has warned South Australian punters to be careful when placing their bets. According to a recent report, local punters are wagering on an increasing number of unregulated online betting operators. This has seriously hurt the performance of poker machines in South Australia, which have reported their worst year so far.
According to the figures provided by the Department of Business and Consumer Services, an amount totalling $680 million are wagered by local players on fruit machines over the 2016/2017 fiscal year. That is a sharp decrease in comparison to the $719 million registered over the previous financial year, but it is even more concerning to know that is the lowest figure reported since the result of $669 million registered back in 2002. When inflation is taken into account, the 2016/2017 result is the worst one in the history of local poker machines.
Moreover, the financial report for the 2016/2017 fiscal year also shows that the tax inflow generated from poker machines to the State Budget was $6-million smaller than initially projected. The poor results made market analysts raise red flags about the future performance of the sector, saying they seriously doubted about projected cash rises that would lead to future surpluses.
A number of officials, including Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis, the independent Senator Nick Xenophon, some social service providers and representatives of the hotel industry in the region have revealed their concern that the poker machine revenue’s collapse only conceals the hidden increase in gambling addictions and problem gambling behaviour, due to the fact that more and more players simply prefer to use their smartphones and mobile devices and credit cards to place their bets on the Internet.
Some of the officials who shared their opinion on the problem, such as the General Manager of the Australian Hotels Association Ian Horne, said that the collapse in the poker machines revenue would probably result in a larger decline in the South Australian players’ spending at the time when local households are hit by increasing costs.
The problem with the massive decline registered at the poker machines revenue and taxes was commented by the Treasurer Koutsantonis. The latter shared that the online wagering tax that is normally applied to the profits of legally operating Australian online betting companies has been used for helping gambling addicts across the country. According to him, the poker machines revenue decline came as a proof that the harm minimisation measures used by the State Government were actually working.
Mr. Koutsantopis also shared that it was not a good thing that some of the poker activity in South Australia was taken online, which made identifying problem gambling behaviour even harder. He reminded that a completely new online betting tax was implemented in the last year’s State Budget, and the same part of the revenue pledged under the law was planned to be used in gambling harm minimisation programmes.
Nick Xenophon, an independent Senator, described the online gambling industry as the “Wild West” of betting. He also shared that the emerging problem has grown, and that governments had not managed to properly deal with the problem. Senator Xenophon commented that it could seem like a great thing that local players spend less money on poker machines, but that did not reveal how things really were. As mentioned above, he warned that online and offshore gambling became more popular and shared that the trend had spread.
- Author
Daniel Williams
