By Father John Flynn, LC
LONDON recently hosted the ICE Total Gaming Conference and Exhibition near Canary Wharf.
Coinciding with the event, H2 Gambling Capital, a British company that describes itself as “the gambling industry’s leading consulting, market intelligence and data team”, published a report with the latest statistics on gambling around the world.
According to a summary of the report published by the Australian Associated Press the annual per capita gambling loss averages in the country total $1144, for an annual total of $21.5 billion.
The majority of the gambling is done on poker machines and Australia is in first place in the world for gambling per person.
According to the report Monash University gambling researcher Dr Charles Livingstone said Australia had the highest concentration of poker machines in the world.
He also noted that the biggest concentration of the poker machines were in economically disadvantaged areas.
Independent federal senator Nick Xenophon said the figures were an “urgent wake-up call” for politicians, and, he added, 40 per cent of the losses came from problem gamblers.
Senator Xenophon is continuing to lobby for a maximum bet of one dollar on poker machines, together with an hourly cap on overall losses.
While Australia has the highest gambling losses per person, the United States, with a much larger population, has the highest absolute losses, with annual gambling losses of $136 billion.
Gambling is very much in the news in Australia, with the approval of a second casino in Sydney in the final stages.
There have been some attempts to limit gambling losses, with Victoria introducing last year a ban on ATMs in gaming venues.
Victoria’s Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien said that six months after the move there had been a 6.7 per cent drop in the amount of money being spent on poker machines, the ABC reported on December 2.
Then, on December 11, News.com Australia, reported that in the year ending in September spending on poker machines dropped from $A11.2 to $A10.2 billion.
Nevertheless, spending via online gambling went up $110 million.
The good news did not last, however, with Melbourne’s Age newspaper reporting on January 27 that losses on poker machines in Victoria were rising again, after the initial decline following the ban on ATMs.
Australia is, of course, far from being the only country where there are serious concerns over the level of gambling.
On December 4, London’s Telegraph newspaper said Britons had gambled 46 billion pounds on betting terminals in the past year, being an increase of almost 50 per cent in the past four years.
Players can choose from a variety of games on these betting machines, and, according to the article, profits for betting shops are significantly up, by seven per cent compared to the previous year and 47 per cent higher than in 2009.
Turning to the United States, online gambling is an area that has seen rapid growth and according to a February 5 article in the Washington Post up to 10 states in America this year will consider legislation to legalise this form of gambling.
Eight states considered such bills in 2013, but only two, Nevada and New Jersey, approved them.
When it comes to more traditional forms of gambling, in a recent article published on January 31 in the Tallahassee Democrat, president of the New York-based think tank Institute for American Values David Blankenhorn said slot machines were “a loser”.
Slot machines, the American equivalent of Australia’s poker machines, now accounted for 70 per cent of all revenue in America’s casinos, he said.
Florida is considering expanding the number of slot machines and Mr Blankenhorn advised against such a move, pointing out they were designed to encourage addictive behaviour.
“No steady player has ever beaten, or will ever beat, a slot machine — all they do is take your money,” he said.
The addictive nature of slot machines was described in a July 6 article published last year in the Washington Post. The machines use positive sound effects to entice players, even when they have suffered a partial loss.
Behavioural neuroscientist Michael J. Dixon, of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, explained that through a study of the design and computer algorithms in slot machines they found they encouraged irrational behaviour and gave players an illusion of control.
On January 27, Paul Davies, a fellow at the Institute for American Values, wrote in the Tampa Bay Times that people should not be led astray by promises that more gambling would bring about economic benefits for the state. He noted that in Illinois, the state’s 10 casinos employed 7828 people, at the same time the state Gaming Board said 9957 problem gamblers placed their name on a list that prohibitted them from entering a casino.
“In other words, the casinos have helped create more gambling addicts than jobs,” he said.
As countries consider whether to further expand gambling they would do well to consider all the downsides of further encouraging the already considerable opportunities for people to lose their money.
