Australian Gambling By Numbers

The Australian gambling market is growing every year and the scope of the betting industry keeps on changing with new laws and trends.

We examine this dynamic market and discuss the current state of the Australian gambling laws. Let’s look at the factors which have contributed to the growth of gambling in Australia, current legislation and which sectors contribute the most to the Australian gambling industry. We also address the issue of compulsive gambling in Australia and what is being done to fight this problem.

Factors Contributing to the Growth of Gambling in Australia

The emergence of the online casino caused a surge in the popularity of gambling by bringing it into the comfort of your home. The mobile casino ensured that the boom continued unabated and grew exponentially by personalizing gambling and allowing you to play your top online casino games on the go, directly from your mobile device, anytime and from anywhere.

A number of changes have occurred in the gambling industry in just the last decade or so, and each of them has contributed to the growth of the industry:

Australian Online Casino Gambling Legislation

The first piece of legislation to regulate gambling in Australia – the Interactive Gambling Act – didn’t impact online gambling much because it was passed in 2001, when this form of gambling was still new.

It took another 16 years for the government to take the next steps to regulate gambling. It did this by passing the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act of 2017. Among other things, the Act required operators to obtain a license from the Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA) to cater to the Australian market.

Australian Gambling in Numbers

The numbers tell you exactly how the gambling industry has been surging ahead in in Australia.

• According to a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 39% of the Australian population or 6.8 million people gamble regularly in Australia
• The most popular games are:

• Lotteries: 76%
• Scratch cards: 22%
• Electronic gaming machines (EGMs): 21%

• 54% of the gambling population in Australia consists of males.
• In 2015, 1.39 million Australian adults faced some level of gambling problems.

• Gamblers from low-income households spent more of their total disposable income on gambling than those from high-income households:

• Low-income households: 10% of the total disposable income
• High-income households: 1% of the total disposable income

• Pokies machines in New South Wales raked in a profit of AU$6.5 billion in 2019. That staggering sum equals almost the GDP of Fiji!

The total bets that Australian players placed in 2017-2018 were worth AU$242 billion:

• Sportsbetting: Total spend of AU$11.6 billion, or a per capita spend of AU$604
• Racing: Total spend of AU$25.8 billion, or a per capita spend of AU$1,340
• Gaming, including pokies and casino games: Total spend of AU$181.4 billion, or a per capita spend of AU$9,419

This is a huge leap from the AU$208 billion spent in 2016-2017! Average that out across the 19.75 million adult Australians – as per data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – and you get an average per capita spend of about AU$12,000 annually!

Here is the total expenditure across all gaming categories in Australia for 2017-2018:

Big spend in gambling raises the potential for big losses. Take a look at the losses suffered by Australian players during the same period, for the money they spent (as listed above), and you know why Australians are considered among the biggest spenders and worst losers in the world!

Australia ranks first in annual gambling losses per adult, as per a 2017 study by H2 Gambling Capital:

The overall losses incurred by Australian players in 2017-2018 were worth AU$24.887 billion, a 5% increase from the total of AU$23.694 billion in 2016-2017! Translate that down to losses per capita and you get a high AU$1,260 that Australian players lost in that year!

The following is a break-up of the losses by game type:

• Sportsbetting: An AU$1.23 billion loss, or a 16.3% increase over the previous year that translates to a per capita loss of AU$62
• Racing: An AU$3.5 billion loss, or a 7.1% increase over the previous year that translates to a per capita loss of AU$177
• Gaming (including pokies and casino games): An AU$20.1 billion loss, or a 3.9% increase over the previous year that translates to a per capita loss of AU$1,017

From these numbers you will see that the increase in spend year on year – from 2016-2017 to 2017-2018 – as per a report in the 35th edition of the Australian Gambling Statistics is quite significant:

Pokies and Australian Gambling

The high numbers are backed up by easy and frequent access to gambling equipment, especially pokies. A 2017 report showed that Australia has 20% of all the pokies or slot machines in the world! A survey by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2017 found there were 200,000 of these machines in Australia, with 100,000 in New South Wales.

The reason is that it is one of few countries that allow these machines to be installed in locations apart from casinos. You would find pokies/slot machines at bars, pubs and even eating joints across all of Australia, except Western Australia.

Of course, there are rules and regulations governing the use of these machines, but they just might not be enough. For instance, you are not allowed to bet more than AU$5 at a time. While that itself may seem like a good measure, it actually isn’t because a player could easily end up placing 20 bets of AU$5 and lose AU$100 in 20 minutes!

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Sportsbetting and Australian Gambling

Sportsbetting in Australia is hugely popular among the younger generation. This popularity is fueled partly by the explosion in popularity of mobile devices and the ability now to place bets directly from your mobile.

There was a growth of a little less than 13% in bets placed on races from 2015-2016 to 2016-2017. There was a growth of 4% in sportsbetting for the same period. The sportsbetting numbers see an unusual spike in 2017-2018: it grew by 14.9%, while the growth in the numbers for racing was lower, at 8.1%.

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Gambling in Australia During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic may have brought the land-based casino industry to a grinding halt in Australia, but it had the exact opposite effect on the online gambling industry.

According to a survey in 2020, the gambling-spend per month during the COVID-19 lockdown shot up for men, while for women it reduced slightly. For men, it rose from AU$594 in the pre-COVID-19 times to AU$770 during the lockdown, a jump of over AU$175. For women, it slumped from a pre-lockdown AU$250 to AU$100 during the lockdown.

Here are a few key findings of the study:

• Approximately 1 in 3 participants of the survey signed up for a new betting account.
• 1 in 20 participants started gambling online.
• The number of participants who gambled 4 times a week rose from the pre-COVID 23% to 32% during the lockdown.
• Major games played were horse racing, greyhound racing, sportsbetting and lotto.
• 79% of the participants were said to be at risk of facing or already suffering from harm related to gambling.

• Players from the younger age group of 18 years to 34 years were more likely to:

• Sign up for a new online casino account
• Increase their gambling frequency per month
• Increase their gambling spend per month (the official number given is a jump from AU$687 to AU$1,075
• Suffer from gambling problems or gambling-related issues

• For some, shutting down of local gambling venues has ensured more savings and increased spend on essential commodities

The games that the people surveyed engaged in most during the lockdown were:

• Horse racing: Close to 60%
• Sportsbetting: About 45%
• Lotto: Approximately 38%
• Greyhound racing: About 37%

Problem Gambling in Australia

One look at the numbers listed earlier and you know that there definitely is a problem. For an individual to spend AU$12,000 a year on gambling is just not right, especially when you know that the money could have been better spent elsewhere. And it is an indicator of another major issue lurking in the shadows – problem gambling.

Gambling stress prompts about 400 Australians to take the extreme step of suicide each year, a figure that the numbers from Australia’s Productivity Commission seem to agree on.

The Victorian Population Gambling and Health Study 2018-2019 threw up an interesting and scary statistic – two-thirds or 69% of the adult population of Victoria had participated in one form of gambling or another over the previous year. More than 200,000 Australian players had a high-level gambling problem. And almost double that number had a lower level problem!

Here is some data about problem gamblers in New South Wales, as per the NSW Gambling Survey of 2019, backed up by numbers collated by Goodwin and others in 2017:

• Each high-level problem gambler is likely to affect 6 people around him. Given that the total number of problem gamblers in New South Wales stood at the time of this study at 56,000, the total number of people likely to be affected was a staggering 336,000.
• A player with a moderate-level gambling problem is likely to impact 3 people. A total of approximately 158,000 moderate risk category gamblers meant the total number of affected people stood at 474,000.
• Each gambler with a low-level gambling problem impacted 1 person directly, and there are 373,000 such gamblers.

One of the reasons for such heavy numbers across Australia is the extensive amount of advertising and promotion that gambling receives across various media. A research study of 2019 found that on an average there were 374 gambling ads daily on free-to-air Australian TV in 2016!

Problem gambling in Australia is a reality that comes with a lot of negative effects for victims:

• Research by the University of South Australia shows it to be the second-largest cause for prisoner crime in Victoria, after drugs.
• 31% of problem gamblers in Australia face mental health issues like depression.
• A study in 2017 showed that approximately 3350 people in Victoria were rendered homeless due to problem gambling.
• 1 in 50 Australians visited a hospital or clinic because of problems caused by gambling.
• 80% of the losses on poker machines in Australia were suffered by 20% of the total players, according to a statement by a TabCorp executive before the Productivity Commission.

So what would be the way forward? Most of the people who participated in the study suggested one or more of the following as changes that needed to be made:

By the end of 2018, gaming ministers of the different states and territories of Australia put together a National Consumer Protection Framework for online betting.

Other steps have been taken as well. One of them was upgrading the Gambling Administration Act of 1995 to the Gambling Administration Act of 2019. The purpose of this law: to provide a framework that was in sync with the developments and events related to gambling in Australia today.

These are some of the initiatives that are being planned, according to experts:

The gambling industry is vibrant in Australia, but there are red flags as well. The need of the hour is to have checks and balances in place to ensure safe and fair gambling and ensure protection of the vulnerable. The gambling reforms that have been initiated, and the ones in the pipeline, therefore, seem to be on time. However, it remains to be seen if they will be enough.

Further Reading: Australian Gambling Authorities and Regulations

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