Shocking Aussie Gambling Losses after Lockdown

Shocking news from the Queensland government today revealed that when punters were allowed to use poker machines in July after the three-month lockdown due to Covid, an astonishing $300 million was gambled within the space of one month.

What’s perhaps even more astonishing is that this figure represents an increase of 31.5% over the same month in 2019.

It also looks like the trend has continued since then with the poker machine industry stating that their earnings have increased month on month.

These figures obviously mean that Queensland players are losing more money in poker machines than ever before with the figures in 2021 dwarfing pre covid losses by a huge amount.

The reality of these poker machine earnings means that around $2.8 billion has been lost by Queensland punters playing poker machines in the last 12 months and this number represents the biggest losses since records began in 2004!

Relationships Australia community educator, David McAnalen, believes the reason for these shocking figures can be associated with the Covid epidemic with the job and financial uncertainty which goes hand in hand with it.

"It's a comfort to go and gamble. For people with a poor relationship to gambling, they gamble for the effect. They don't gamble to win money," he said.

According to Central Queensland University gambling expert, Dr Alex Russell, the stimulus payments in the form jobseeker and jobkeeper allowances contributed to these gambling figures.

"When a lot of venues reopened, money went straight into pokies, Australia is a bit unusual in that we have pokies in pubs and clubs whereas most countries don't.

So, it was very easy to go to the pub, catch up with a mate and then go and spend some money on the pokies because a lot of other recreational things were not available." Said Dr Russell.

It’s a similar story in Victoria where it is estimated that even though less than 25% of Aussies play pokies, 50 % of those that do have a gambling addiction.