People reading this may not realize how pervasive gambling is in Australia thanks to poker machines ("pokies"). These are slot machines, basically. And they're everywhere with one exception: they're illegal outside of casinos in Western Australia.

In every other state, you can walk into many pubs and RSLs ("Retired Servicemen's Leagues", veteran's clubs, basically) and sit there and lose your house. Pokies can be the only thing keeping many businesses in business. They licenses are so valuable that some businesses are bought simply so the licenses can be transferred. Some state governments realize this so reduce the number of licenses on transfer (eg you buy a business wih 20 pokies and you get to transfer 16 and lose 4). This had the predictable outcome of having pokie licenses skyrocket in value.

AFAIK sportsbetting (eg DraftKings) is illegal in Australia because the government has realized how damaging it is yet pokies remain legal.

Oh it's worth adding that Stake, which is headquartered in a shack in Curacao for legal reasons, was started and run by Australians who have absolutely raked in the cash to the point of now being billionaires.

Another problematic part of all this is how gambling has been effectively used for money laundering. The casinos already got hit for allowing this to happen. Pokiies and smaller establishments remain a loophole.

Consider the case of Troy Stolz [1], who leaked documents about ClubsNSW not complying with anti-money laundering and compliance. ClubsNSW was able to bring a private criminal prosecution about this. Youtuber Jordan Shanks-Markovina had his house firebombed (allegedly over this) [2].

Youtuber Boy Boy showed how ridiculously lax AML is with gambling [3].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/07/clubs...

[2]: https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/friendlyj...

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoyH1dgj8Lo

I’m in Melbourne and I honestly haven’t seen any around. I see all this talk about the pubs being full of them but all of the pubs I’ve been to have none.

I’m thinking it must exclusively be an outer suburb thing or places where old people hang out.

Online/App based sports betting is legal in Aus now but only through the existing licensed gaming companies.