Australia: The gaming scene by the numbers

The gambling industry is huge in Australia, a statement that is remarkable considering that poker machines did not earn their present-day permanence in clubs and casinos until the 1970s (New South Wales had a monopoly on slots from 1956) and sports betting were almost entirely absent as an institution until the 1980s. Despite that shaky start though, gambling is here to stay; online and offline, the industry brought in $24.1 billion in 2014 to 2015.

The most recent analysis of the country’s gaming habits – from the Productivity Commission back in 2010 – indicated that almost three quarters (70 percent) of Australians had played a casino table game (blackjack, roulette, etc.), lottery, or scratch card within the previous year, with 600,000 people playing slot machines or pokies every week.

Gaming Machines

The popularity of slots is tailing off around the globe, but much of casino’s revenue still come from gaming machines like pokies. Turnover from slots reached $136 million in 2014 to 2015; that was a six percent increase over the previous twelve months and a 32 percent climb over the course of the decade. Overall, 2014 to 2015 was a record year for gambling in Australia.

To put those numbers into perspective, the next most profitable niche in Australian gaming is the casino table game, inclusive of baccarat, blackjack, and craps, with 25 million earned. Income from pokies has seen an annual increase every twelve month period since 1989-90, with the notable exception of two years, 2007 to 2008 and 2009 to 2010, when turnover fell by 2 million and 1 million respectively.

Online Casino

While the above numbers discuss physical casinos exclusively, it was hard to ignore the role that online brands have played in getting more people involved in gaming. In Australia, the online arm of casino and sports betting is growing at a rate of 15 percent per year as of the end of 2016, for a total of $1.4 billion spent every twelve months.

The appearance of Pokies.com, a site with around eighty different slot machines, including a phenomenon like Starburst as well as more niche apps like Esqueleto Explosivo and Lolly Land, added a certain convenience to the casino experience while retaining the aspects that helped pokies become a national pastime. So, where does the industry go from here?

Millennials

As mentioned, slot machines are falling out of favour; it was not so much that their current audience has moved into newer pastures, but that the next generation, the social media-happy, mobile game-loving millennial crowd, has no love for luck-based experiences. Millennials are a touchy-feely lot and like to influence everything they can get their hands on, from brands to games.

Physical casinos are likely to surrender floor space to new skill-based games in the future – not so many pokies as thinkies – with the process already underway in the United States. It sounds like a strange concept, but the idea of the casino as a paradise of table games and hundreds of slot machines increasingly looks like a modern dinosaur. The next few decades will arguably see the casino come to resemble a video arcade, with first-person shooters, Candy Crush clones, pinball, and perhaps even carnival games like hook-a-duck.

In summary, the gambling industry is experiencing huge growth in Australia, driven by online brands and the population's love of pokies. At the same time, this growth comes together with a transformation, as younger crowds change the technological landscape.