Better rates of return
Offshore online casinos are doing better than ever in the land Down Under, according to the Australian Times.
The reasons are easy to pinpoint, including ease of access and improved technologies that make for a more immersive player experience. But the bottom line is—well, the bottom line. Land-based poker machines are mandated to offer a return-to-player percentage of between 85 percent and 90 percent. But online pokies can offer more than 95 percent.
“We’ve seen a drop in participation in gambling on a per-capita basis, but the expenditure on gambling hasn’t dropped,” said Australian Gambling Research Centre Manager Anna Thomas. “What we are seeing is a smaller group of people gambling more heavily.” Pokies are most popular, but online and sports betting are growing at the quickest pace.
Australians are the world’s biggest gamblers, and lost an average of AU$1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country in 2015, a 6 percent increase over 2014. Even so, the profile of gamblers has shifted from 2000 through 2014, from 80 percent of adult who play each year to just 64 percent.
Poker is especially popular, but the federal and state governments are pulling in fewer revenues due to offshore competition.
The Times speculated that Aussie lawmakers may want to “intervene in such a way to see the revenue that is currently heading offshore through remote gambling make its way back into the Treasury’s coffers … But what is clear is that the gambling landscape has changed and that the online world is, as is so often the case, ahead of the pack when it comes to adaptation and giving the punters what they want.”
