Hokie Pokies Lead List of Addiction Concerns Down Under
Published January 4, 2019 by Lee R
Australia´s players are absorbing record losses while advertising and access to gaming expands relatively unabated in Australia.
In Australia, this holiday season came with concerns about problem gamblers falling prey to addiction in their added leisure time.
Increase in Play and Vulnerability
This is compounded by excessive advertising during this period as well, with anti-gaming lobbyists expressing particular concern over aggressive marketing campaigns encouraging gambling.
Record Losses
With 2018 gambling losses for Australians approaching a billion (960m in 2017 and growing), anti-gaming advocates are taking the time this holiday season to speak out on what needs to be done gamblers Down Under more effectively.
Lobbyist Objections
This includes those same advocates offering professional counseling, with the additional voice of former addicts raising public objection to EGTs (Electronic Gaming Terminals), a.k.a. ¨Pokies,¨ saying that the attention that these increasingly widely used machines garner from enhanced sounds and flashing lights even when not in use only serves to spike the temptation of users vulnerable to gambling addiction.
Biggest Players
A 2018 poll by global gambling analyst firm H2 Gambling Capital indicated that Australians were actually the top gambling spenders among all global markets.
Per Capita Losses
Another discomforting figure revealed in the report was the rise in gambling losses per-capita to AU$1,320 million in 2017, with pokies generating more than half of the annual gambling losses of Australian adults.
Profitable Pokies
It turns out pokies are the most profitable outlets for service providers, with their increasing popularity among operators and gaming proprietors rendering them all the more prone to raising addiction among Australians.
Youth Increases
More unsettling figures abound, with the most telling of all being the observed increase in problem gambling among children, characterized by a new finding revealing that 3 out of 4 children who watch spectator sports now associate it with gambling; followed by the steadily decreasing median mobile and online gaming age among minors.
Outlook for 2019
With all these warning signs in Australia, it is no wonder that anti-gaming lobbyists are rushing to find fresh solutions for lingering gaming issues in the Australian market. The key to a healthy 2019 now is for the government looks to be a full embrace of the urgency and legislate more stringent protections such as limiting the availability of the pokies and controlling the access of minors to gambling terminals online and off.
