Pokies are everywhere – but why?
It’s difficult to find a part of South Australia without poker machines.
Even Cadney Homestead, 998 kilometres from Adelaide on the Sturt Highway, has a set of pokies.
InDaily’s interactive poker machine map shows poker machine clusters in certain areas – like Port Adelaide. But it also shows a thick weave of machines across all of our population centres – and even a few sparsely populated spots.
According to an analysis by InDaily, five out of every six hotels in South Australia have poker machines.
Academics say the machines tend to cluster in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, where their takings tend to be higher.
Analysis by InDaily found the five most disadvantaged council areas in the state have almost four times as many poker machines as the five most advantaged. That finding has been replicated by researchers in cities across Australia.
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Others, including hotel lobby, argue the machines are evenly distributed across the state’s pubs and clubs and only cluster in areas where there is a pre-existing collection of venues.
Australian Hotels Association head Ian Horne told InDaily that when poker machines were introduced to the state in 1994, nearly every pub wanted them.
“The legislation in ‘94 said if you have a thing called a hotel or a licenced club licence, you can apply for gaming,” he said.
“The vast majority of hotels did apply for gaming, and that’s where the machines did end up. That’s why there’s theoretically a greater concentration in Port Adelaide.
“History shows us, facts show us, that 98 per cent of all of those hotels and clubs were there well before gaming.
“You actually can’t target anything, because only a thing called a licenced hotel, or a thing called a licenced club can have machines.”
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In 1994, a year after the State Bank collapse, state unemployment exceeded 12 per cent.
Hotel historian and researcher Patricia Sumerling told InDaily that, at the time, most hotels were struggling and desperate for a financial boost.
“When the option came through for hotels to have a licence for pokie machines, about more than 80 per cent of hotels were operating in the red and would have gone broke if they hadn’t got them,” Sumerling said.
“A little country hotel literally only needs about three pokie machines to be solvent.
“Had they not had this option, more than half of them would not now be existing.
“The pokie machine was the beginning of all their profits.”
Statistics provided by the AHA show a huge spike in the number of venues with poker machines between 1994 and 1998, followed by a plateau through to 2013.
The AHA’s Horne argues statistic show that since venues got their poker machines in 1994, there has been almost no movement and very few new hotels opened – indicating, he says, the market isn’t attempting to shift poker machines to places of disadvantage.
How to use the interactive poker machine map
- The map behaves like a Google map. You can use your mouse to move around the screen. Use your mousewheel or the buttons on the map to zoom in on a particular location or zoom out to view the whole state.
- Click on the pins to get more information about each venue and the number of poker machine licences they hold.
- Click on the suburbs to get more information about their disadvantage score. Over 1000 means more advantaged than average; under 1000 means more disadvantaged than average.
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