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Wesley Mission says Government is failing to act on gambling harm as pokies losses skyrocket even higher

Wesley Mission

Media Release                                                                                                    5 June 2025

NSW poker machine losses explode to $2.17 billion in first 90 days of 2025 – Wesley Mission says government is failing to act to address gambling harm

Wesley Mission is demanding the New South Wales government urgently act to protect people, as poker machine losses skyrocketed to $2.17 billion in the first 90 days of 2025. Some communities are now seeing average losses of more than $3,200 per person annually.

Wesley Mission CEO Rev Stu Cameron  says it is “morally indefensible” that it appears industry continues to have a disproportionate influence on policy..

“The government is still bending to the will of powerful clubs and hotel groups while everyday people and families are being financially and emotionally crushed.  This is the epitome of policy paralysis.”

The latest quarterly data compiled and analysed by Wesley Mission from Liquor and Gaming figures shows NSW residents are losing over $24 million every day — more than $1 million an hour — on poker machines.

For the first time, the data also includes estimated annual losses per person by Local Government Area. In:
• Fairfield: $3,255 per person
• Burwood-Strathfield: $2,511 per person
• Cumberland: $2,180 per person

These figures do not capture the full picture, as they include children and non-gamblers, meaning the real toll on regular gamblers is likely far higher.

Rev Cameron says what the Minns Government has done so far amounts to smoke and mirrors. “The industry is thriving, people are significantly harmed and the government keeps talking of ‘reform’ while the damage escalates.  This inaction is a gift to the industry.”

An upcoming Performance Audit by the NSW Audit Office, due to be tabled in Parliament on June 12, is expected to confirm what frontline services already know: the current approach is failing.

Meanwhile, the number of poker machines keeps rising — with 87,789 electronic gaming machines now operating across the state.

Wesley Mission is calling on the NSW Government to immediately implement:
• Mandatory poker machine shutdowns from midnight to 10am
• A cashless gambling card with enforceable harm reduction limits
• Tighter caps on machine numbers in high-risk communities

“These are not radical ideas — they are basic public health protections,” said Rev Cameron.
“If people were being harmed this severely by alcohol, drugs, or unsafe roads, the government would act. Gambling should be no different. Instead, the government does little while the industry rakes in billions.”

Regional communities are also bleeding. In the first 90 days of the year:
• The Central Coast lost $83.9 million
• Newcastle lost $47.5 million

Wesley Mission continues to provide crisis support, housing assistance and financial counselling to those devastated by gambling harm across NSW.

 

ENDS

Wesley Mission CEO, Rev Stu Cameron is available for interview

Media contact: Anne Holt | [email protected] | 0418 628 342

Quarter 1 2025 poker machine loss data for NSW

 

Total Losses Q1: $2,169,617,069 (90 days in the quarter, 5.9% increase over Q1 2024)

Total losses Q1 2024: $2,048,132,057

Total Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs) Q1: 87,789 (increase of 17 machines)

Daily losses Q1: $24,106,856

Hourly losses Q1: $1,004,452

[Note: losses in NSW are seasonal, and Q1 losses are always lower than Q4 of the previous year]

 

By venue type

Q1 2025	Net losses	# EGMs	# Premises	% of losses
Clubs	$1,247,557,750	65,240	996	57.50%
Hotels	$922,059,319	22,549	1,147	42.50%
Q1 2024
Clubs	$1,179,438,186	65,117	1,005	57.58%
Hotels	$868,693,872	22,495	1,168	42.42%

 

 

Q1 Comparison 2019-2025

Q1	2019	2020[1]	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Hotels	$604,369,513	$579,110,616	$669,225,228	$776,084,548	$813,954,278	$868,693,872	$922,059,319
Clubs	$969,467,135	$1,007,702,877	$1,031,323,574	$1,045,415,317	$1,133,908,753	$1,179,438,186	$1,247,557,750
Total	$1,573,836,648	$1,586,813,493	$1,700,548,802	$1,821,499,865	$1,947,863,031	$2,048,132,058	$2,169,617,069
+/- previous yr		+0.8%	+7.2%	+7.1%	+6.9%	+5.1%	+5.9%

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Losses Q1 annually, showing increases each year even during COVID lockdowns in 2020

 

 

1.1.   Top grossing venues in Q1 2025

Venue		Previous rank	Suburb	LGA	Number of machines	Estimated losses (profit to venue) for Q1
Hotels
1	Ambulance Station Hotel	1	Auburn	Cumberland	30	$5.4million
2	Oasis on Beamish	2	Campsie	Canterbury-Bankstown	30	$5.2million
3	Cross Roads Hotel	3	Casula	Liverpool	30	$5.1million
Clubs
1	Mounties	1	Mount Pritchard	Fairfield	603	$23million
2	Bankstown Sports Club	2	Bankstown	Canterbury-Bankstown	745	$21million
3	Wentworthville Leagues Club	3	Wentworthville	Cumberland	545	$21million

 

 

 

1.2.   LGA loss data

Now that Liquor and Gaming provide population figures for LGAs, we are calculating the number of people per EGM. The lower the number, the higher the EGM density.

Venue type	Average across NSW LGAs
Hotels	357
Clubs	124
Both (total population/total EGMs)	92

 

Estimated annual loss per person:

As a very rough estimate, we divided the loss amount for an LGA (or small bundle) by the LGA population and multiplied by 4. This is an under-estimate, as the losses in Q1 are usually the lowest quarterly losses each year. The resulting figure is for every person in the LGA, adults and children, and so would be considerably higher if only the adult, active gambling population was considered.

 

Top 10 Metro LGAs for losses:

The only change from Q4 2024 is that Sydney is no longer bundled with Mosman/North Sydney, but the order of LGAs remains the same

	LGA	Losses	Daily losses	EGMs	Venues	ppl/EGM	Estimated annual loss per person
1	Canterbury-Bankstown	$  186,060,655	$  2,067,341	4924	61	75	$2006
2	Fairfield	$  169,624,242	$  1,884,714	3808	37	55	$3255
3	Cumberland	$  128,310,858	$  1,425,676	2719	32	87	$2180
4	Sydney	$    95,897,232	$  1,065,525	3324	158	64	$1813
5	Blacktown	$    94,295,370	$  1,047,726	2910	37	136	$951
6	Parramatta	$    71,374,700	$     793,052	1899	34	135	$1112
7	Georges River	$    71,018,872	$     789,099	2091	31	73	$1866
8	Penrith	$    58,189,824	$     646,554	2548	35	85	$1069
9	Campbelltown	$    56,386,030	$     626,511	1854	21	95	$1278
10	Burwood, Strathfield	$    53,871,045	$     598,567	895	19	96	$2511

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top 10 Regional (non-metro) LGAs for losses

Changes in the top 10 ranking LGAs are due to the changes in the way Liquor and Gaming bundle LGAs together if one has fewer than 5 venues of a type. The bundling is not done the same way each quarter and may differ for hotels and clubs. This may give a false impression of increased losses in some areas. Venue by venue data (currently collected by NSW Liquor and Gaming but not released as it is in Victoria) would solve this problem.

 

	LGA	Losses	Daily Losses	EGMs	Venues	Ppl/EGM	Estimated annual loss per person
1	Central Coast	$  83,938,461	$932,649.57	4439	65	78	$969
2	Wollongong	$  48,659,175	540,657.50	2703	62	79	$907
3	Newcastle	$  47,537,697	$528,196.63	2741	80	62	$1126
4	Murray River etc**	$  40,142,449	$446,027.21	2281	42	n/a	n/a
5	Lake Macquarie	$  39,332,765	$437,030.72	2458	59	87	$736
6	Tweed	$  27,749,860	$308,331.78	1881	28	52	$1140
7	Shoalhaven	$  25,263,466	$280,705.18	1653	36	66	$931
8	Albury (H,C) and Greater Hume ( C)***	$  23,913,507	$265,705.63	1208	19	n/a	n/a
9	Armidale Regional etc****	$  22,404,805	$248,942.28	1479	68	n/a	n/a
10	Mid-Coast	$  22,273,808	$247,486.76	1372	46	70	$923

 

**Berrigan, Edward River, Federation, Hay, Murray River

*** Greater Hume hotel data is included with Wagga Wagga and associated LGAs

**** Armidale, Bellingen, Glen Innes Severn, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Inverell, Tenterfield

 

Breadth of impact of venues prioritising gambling income:

Our data analysis has to date focused on a simple listing of the LGAs with the largest losses. These “Top 10 Metro/Regional” lists do not vary much, apart from idiosyncrasies introduced by changes to bundling by Liquor and Gaming, which appears more concerned with venue privacy than transparency of data for public health policy development. The losses in the LGAs will always be very high, because the total number of machines is so high. It is worth bearing in mind that Tasmania has 2,274 poker machines in total in its pubs and clubs, a figure exceeded by 6 out of 10 top 10 Metropolitan LGAs (each) and the top 5 regional LGAs (each).

These figures show, quarter by quarter, the depth of gambling harm through the proxy of financial losses to individuals and the community.

 

However, until now, we have not investigated the breadth of gambling harm across the state.

In the absence of venue by venue data, we have turned to ranking of every venue in the state by net profit (to the venue)/net loss (to the community). Although the amount of the loss remains protected by a close reading of the Taxation Administration Act by the Department, the higher the ranking the greater the losses.

By using the ranking spreadsheet, we can also investigate harm in each LGA, as these figures are not bundled as in the net profit spreadsheets.

Our analysis shows that in some LGAs with few venues and low numbers of poker machines; many venues are disproportionately profitable to their owners or managers. Our methodology is this:

• For each quarter, for each LGA, we take the median of the ranks for all the venues
• We then sort the medians to establish the Top 10 list
• We then note in how many quarters an LGA has appeared in the top 10 rankings median list.

To illustrate from Q1 2025, the median depends on the absolute rankings of each venue, and how many venues there are in an LGA. There are around 1000 clubs and 1150 hotels with operating poker machines in NSW, very unevenly distributed.

 

LGA	Type	Number of venues	Top Rank	Bottom Rank	Median
Albury	Clubs	4	34	593	184
	Hotels	11	169	1001	652
Armidale Region	Clubs	4	185	928	341
	Hotels	8	576	1136	759
Bayside	Clubs	18	42	877	511
	Hotels	15	44	1054	138
Burwood	Clubs	5	20	371	130
	Hotels	7	17	563	43
Fairfield	Clubs	18	1	987	90
	Hotels	19	9	549	56
Shellharbour	Clubs	6	47	384	257
	Hotels	9	276	862	467

 

The resulting lists of LGAs which have venues ranking highly enough to reach the top 10 list each quarter (over the 25 quarters for which we have data) include LGAs normally not discussed in terms of gambling harm. Figure 2 (HOTELS), for instance, has Burwood LGA at the head of the harm list, meaning Burwood’s median hotel losses ranking occurred in the top 10 in the state in 24 of the 25 quarters for which data is available.  LGAs appearing in this new analysis which have never appeared on the net loss top 10 Metro/Regional lists include The Hills, Ryde, Griffith, Leeton and Wagga Wagga (for hotels) and Shellharbour (high median club rankings for 23 of 25 quarters), Murray River, Balranald and Singleton (for clubs).

 

 

Figure 2: Analysis - Maleakhi Faith for Wesley Mission

 

 

 

Figure 3: Analysis by Maleakhi Faith for Wesley Mission

 

 

 

 

 

Our interpretation of these results is that any LGA which has median rankings occurring in the top 10 for at least one quarter is experiencing losses through poker machines significantly in excess of average amounts. It may be a single very highly ranked venue in an LGA with few venues, or there may be several venues ranked highly.

Either way, it raises the question of whether venues in those LGAs are operating as hotels or clubs, or as casinos.

 

 

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