I agree but it isn’t much of a leap to limiting losses once the technology is introduced and trialled. It feels like death (of the pokies) by 100 cuts.
Oh I didn’t realise they canned it since they announced it in 22
But point is, harm reduction measures are going to continue to encroach on pokies revenue and every year this happens diminishes the value of the lease
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Load up limits are a furphy. Its not like we have $1000 bills that the machines will no longer accept. The vast majority of gamblers simply insert cash as required. This only effects people who have a win & will then have to convert it back to cash before inserting into another machine. A minor inconvenience that will have no real impact unfortunately.
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I feel like you are misrepresenting this on purpose. It’s actually $14.8m in revenue less $11.8m in costs to give a profit of $3m before depreciation and amortisation. We still hold a liability on the books for the loan to the government as well. Being involved in a heavily regulated business must take up a lot of resources at Board and Management level.
That’s exactly how it works. If someone tries to sue the club saying the gambling license caused them or their family harm and then the club literally has it in its constitution, they don’t have a very good defense do they?
John,
Can I direct you to the gambling regulators site and their acknowledgement that gambling does social harm? The club is not going to get singled out because we recognise what the regulator has already stated.
https://www.vgccc.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-values/our-position-gambling-harm
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How is what I said misrepresenting the facts? I stated it as revenue & thats exactly what it is. I have also stated numerous times that the pokies in particular represent about $3m in profit. There are costs associated with all our revenue streams. The club generates more than 70M in revenue but had an operational loss because of expenses.
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Yeah, it’s certainly a reform that could make a meaningful impact in limiting harm. Of course, the effectiveness of it will live or die in the detail.
The VGCCC is the regulator for gambling in Vic
The VGCCC acknowledges that gambling causes harm on its website (1)
Since you think an acknowledgement of harm is an admission of liability, why aren’t people suing the regulator as a result of that statement?
Let’s try again
Sportsbet is a provider of gambling services
Sportsbet has publicly acknowledged gambling causes harm (2)
Since you think an acknowledgement of harm is an admission of liability, why aren’t people suing Sportsbet as a result of that statement?
If you like, I’m happy to link you to areas on the Crown and Star casino websites that also acknowledge gambling causes harm
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The fact a footy club can make 70 mill and still have annual losses proves a point I’ve been going on about for years. The cost base to run afl club’s is way too high, clearly the players are getting paid too much or something, coz the tiny profits and losses most clubs make per year is ridiculous.
There wouldn’t be any other sport in Australia that costs over 50/60 percent as much to run as afl club’s do.
The sport generates more revenue than any other sport in the country, by a significant margin, but a number of clubs are on life support and big clubs like Essendon are celebrating a 400k profit.
I always assumed we must have been paying shysters like dodo & X way too much. When you consider that the salary cap is less than 13M & the soft cap is about 7.5 there’s a hell of a lot of expense in there that not related to the core football business.
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I think the afl gives us about $16 mill per year too. So yeah, what is happening to the remaining $50 mill (or 30 if the afl money is included in our stated revenue). That’s an extrodinary amount.
Have you ever run a $70 million business?
List management would be a large chunk of salary (both pre and post Dodoro) for all the recruiters, scouts etc and that im pretty sure all sits outside the softcap.
edit. think its also listed in the report that “Key Management Personel” were paid an aggregate of $3.3m for the year
Scouts get paid 2/5 of ■■■■-all. RFK and Rosa would probably do ok, the rest of the recruiting team are probably low-pay casuals doing for the love.
Mark Bolton was appointed to the Club last year as Chief Strategy & Growth Officer. He’s responsible for all non-football related business at EFC.
We made a commitment to find new revenue streams for the Club. We can’t walk away until we achieve this. This takes time and due diligence (If it were easy, we’d all be wealthy over night.)
The supplements saga and COVID had significant financial impact on the Club. We made a choice that we didn’t want to become an AFL funded Club. That would effectively mean handing the keys and decision making over the AFL. We would have to ask their permission every time we want to invest a dollar. Nobody wants that.
We can walk away when we have the financial solution and stability to do so.
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I will start by saying I loathe poker machines.
However, what I believe the NoPE argument fails to consider is the impact to the community when poker machines are owned and operated by an organization that is absolutely compelled to keep the interests of the community and its reputation within the community as a priority Vs an organization that does not face the same obligations.
I worked for many years for one of the major supermarkets. At the time we owned a chain of hotels with gaming, acquisitions that had been made in order to obtain licences to sell packaged liquor in QLD (outdated licensing laws there where only hotel owners can have a licence for a bottle shop). The shareholders of the supermarket hated owning the pokies. as owners of one of the major supermarkets they were particularly concerned around the reputational risk owning the machines would have on their business, one which plays a major part in the lives of almost all communities in the country. As a result, a lot of measures were put in place to restrict the impact the pokies would have (eg betting limits). I felt that of all the available alternatives the community was actually best served by the fact these hotels were owned by an organisation compelled to act within the interests of the broader community.
Eventually though, it was decided to divest the hotels to get away from pokies ownership. The hotels and pokies went to a chain of hotels with PE backing. A number of investments were subsequently made to upgrade machines with considerable effect and the hotel group did exceptionally well from the acquisition. Was the community better off? Absolutely not.
There are a lot of parallels here and I think the community would be better off with these venues remaining with EFC, in whom I have trust to put community interests first.
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I agree with this, and in my experience Clubs look after problem gamblers much better than any pub. Though it is a sad fact, that this addiction is not retristed to pokies, and while a community club can take strong support mearues, it doesn’t stop access to other forms of gambling. I could never agree with banning pokies of casinos, but believe somehow that online gambling in all forms including horses, dogs, footy etc should be totally banned. Even those online games where you buy tokens to continue playing are addictive as well and they take credit cards.
EFC owns Club Gaming Entitlements, where as Woolworths owned Hotel Gaming Entitlements. EFC can only sell their entitlements to other Club based ventures such as horse racing, RSL, Golf clubs.
Woolies-owned venues also profiled pokies players in order to keep them on machines longer, so assuming that’s who he was referring to then it’s a pretty poor example of community benefit