Time Essendon FC got rid of its Pokies licences

Football Discussion Dustin Fletcher Hangar
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Problem gambling becomes a mental health issue not a moral issue. You could use your same argument to lobby for EFC to drop alcohol from all its activities as well.

I regularly play the Pokies, don’t gamble anywhere else but enjoy the flashing lights and noise. My observation at Melton Club is they are very observant of any potential problem gamblers and the folk who spend a lot of time there. No other local venue does that. I support the efforts that Crown are making, granted some are forced on them by the State Government but they have programs in place to also monitor habits of those with a problem. YourPlay will become mandatory in July and you will not be able to gamble without settings limits to time played and money spent. I think it should be expanded to all Pokie venues.

I support EFC to take whatever legal steps it can to be the best footy club and to win premierships. They need to finance that, and if the pokie venue of say $4 million is cut then perhaps each Member can cough up another $50 to cover it. Good luck with that.

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IIRC some clubs that gave up pokies sold the licences at a profit, pokies now being played at another venue.

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Serious question BF - I know you’ve been pretty anti-pokie-removal for a long time. I don’t understand the appeal of pokies personally, but you obviously do. Where would you stand on some of the harm minimisation measures (aside from blanket removal of machines) that have been proposed from time to time? Stuff like $1 (or lower) max spins, increased minimum win percentages, increased minimum time between spins. Or even a dulling-down of the poker machine UI to a more blank plain text experience without all the flashing lights and bells and graphics, a bit like how cigarette plain packaging is done. Would you still get the same level of entertainment if restrictions like that were in place?

I’ve never been a pokies player but i have do a gut-deep dislike for the things, partly because I watched them destroy the Melbourne live music scene in the late 90s, and partly because a relative of mine worked in bankruptcy counselling and got a close-up view of the tide of misery they inflicted. So I don’t really understand why people play them. I’d be interested in the perspective of someone who did.

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Didn’t pick you for another grub in the sky.

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I don’t the regulations in Victoria but over here it was a “use it of lose it” scenario. Any pokies sold will be purchased by another venue and used there.
There were all sorts of hoops to jump through and it was a nightmare to deal with the authorities when we tried to move a dozen machines to one of our other hotels.
In the end most of the larger hotel conglomerates purchased the licenses at a very nice profit for us smaller owners

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Mrs Scotty used to work in gaming rooms. She’d she people waltz in and empty their entire pay/pension cheques and walk out angry/upset/crying all of the above.

They are a cancer that needs cutting out.

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So you’d be for banning all gambling then. You can’t really call out just pokies. And you’d have to call for the banning of alcohol too if you’re consistent.

I don’t gamble, don’t see the appeal of giving away my money. I drink on social occassions, holidays only. But don’t see the logic in banning everything.

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Its not being banned.

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Australia has, by far, the most poker machines per head of population in the world. Most countries limit them to casinos, but we seem to have them in every second pub. There’s a lot of scope for action to reduce their social impact without resorting to a hard ban. And there’s a legit question as to whether an organisation like EFC, that has all sorts of social, community etc related goals and standards it has set for itself, should be involved in what is, right now in Australia, an extremely predatory industry.

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I am anti any regulation that does not address the core problems.

Mrs Fox worked for Gamblers Help and did her PhD thesis on the topic. I read all the data and some of it (based on Ballarat area) was very shocking. All studies show that unless supported Gamblers will find another outlet for their addiction, so banning pokies just moves it elsewhere.

I enjoy the mindless activity of playing pokies, which I view as entertainment. I know that I am not going to win, and accept the monetary loss as the cost of my entertainment. I usually never spend more than an hour or so playing and always set a limit of $100.

At Crown you can set YourPlay parameters of money spent and time played, so that if you reach it, it locks you out of the machines for the rest of the day. It is voluntary at present but will be mandatory in July. Works for me, and I think it should be widened to all venues. I would support maximum bet of $1 or less (I usually bet 50c a spin) and reckon the machines should be set for a maximum numbers of spins per minute. When the pokies we one-arm bandits it took time for each spin, now it is instant and I reckon you could do 40 per minute or maybe more. Would not affect me, but others would get very frustrated.

I am not sure that it was pokies that destroyed the live music scene, as many venues were already morphing to other entertainment, as the drink driving laws really affected our nights out. The big beer barns did change but many places we watched music in the 1970s and 1980s never got pokies and the music died because of changing needs of the young and those farking driving laws and booze buses.

It is easy to blame pokies for the tragic events that happen to some people. Like booze and drugs, it is only a small group who get into real bother, and this is where the effort should go, not banning anything but education and support.

Many surveys have been done on why people play pokies, but I am not sure that the answers are completely honest. @alex.f.94 posted something above about Pokie places being sad and something. Could be true, as many people I watch play look lonely and bored, and may are older folk like me. Not sure they are the main cohort for problem gamblers though, as Mrs Fox’s research seemed to find that it was middled aged people who popped up most.

Maybe the answer is for the Government to take over all gambling and then directly take all the profits and all the risks, and look after the weak, as that is their job.

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I’ve worked in pokies places before and will say that a responsible service of gambling is something that a venue can never fully master. Some venues will be better than others, yes, but for all the good processes you may have in place you can never really know someone’s financial situation and when they’ve gone in too deep. This is different to responsible service of alcohol where there are generally physical cues to pick up on, on top of knowing how much someone has been served within the venue - not fool proof but easier to implement.

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Can’t disagree with that. YourPlayer would go somewhere towards helping at Pokies venues, but other forms of gambling like horses and online stuff seem much harder to control.

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Yeah, no arguments there.

I believe that the issue with pokies is that they nickel and dime you to death, and they allow you scope to do it more or less continually. If you’re gambling on sports, you’re at least a bit limited because the sport actually has to be played for you to gamble on it, and that puts a de facto time limit on. But pokies you can just sit in front of the thing morning til midnight making small bet after small bet until the cupboard is bare. Not to say that people don’t manage to ruin themselves on the horses or sportsbet or whatever but it’s less common, and less psychologically tuned to be addictive than the pokies are.

Online casinos of course are the devil. All the worst aspects of pokies and none of the regulation.

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What kind of an idiot would spend multi million dollars and just watch it fail?
I know he’s rich, but I don’t know anyone who’d do something like that.
Hawthorn sold off their Pokies assets at $35mil~ last year.

Whenever we do sell our Pokies, whoever picks it up will try and get far more money out of the footprint than the club currently is.
The Pokies won’t be going next year. They are still nowhere near replacing the revenue it generates.
By the end of next year, they should be a hell of a lot closer.
I think one of our sponsors end this year, so if we attract a bigger name, we might be in a position to do it. But usually, higher paying sponsors, means they also want something back in return. They don’t just donate the sponsorship out of the goodness of their heart.

Unfortunately, we’re still a while away from moving on from gambling revenue.

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Unless it’s online poker which they completely banned into the ground under the statement that it was live betting, which they supposedly banned for online bookies which lastest about four minutes for them before they were back doing it and instead killed the poker industry in Australia

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Question
Are pokies seen as worse than other AFL gambling/ including betting sponsors?

Dean Bailey and Chris Connolly were scapegoated because the CEO of the Dees at the time held the gaming licence.

Another Question
Who are the EFC Board members/officials holding our gaming licences?

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IMO we should buy more pokies.

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Kate O’Sullivan could be your best bet in that regard.

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yes

mostly because they are functionally designed to psychologically entrap people that are susceptible to it

betting companies employ similar methods (bonus bets etc) but they are not as nefarious as the practical skinner box of the pokie machine

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In principle, the sooner we exit ponies the better.

Challenge for Essendon is we don’t have a core non football business that generates revenue and profit.

And thst leaves football operations. Membership is down about 3% and the club holds almost no cash reserves. So, the Club isn’t in a financial position, or performing well enough on field to support improved off field results.

With Windy Hill needing $50M, The Hangar to need further investment in the medium term, until the Club can build its financial performance and non core business, it can’t exit pokies.

The board has taken too long working procrastinating over building non football revenue. Pokies exit is delayed and pushed back accordingly.