Fewer punters, greater losses
New Zealand gamblers lost less than half as much money to gambling as the world’s biggest punters, their neighbors in Australia.
According to data from H2 Gambling Capital published in the New Zealand Herald, Kiwis have dropped from fourth to sixth place on the list of the world’s most active gamblers. But they still lost an average of $661 for every adult last year, almost five times the global average of $138.
That number pales in comparison to losses sustained by Australian gamblers. Aussies have the dubious distinction of being the world’s biggest losers, with average losses of $1,396 for each adult, or AU$1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. In the period spanning September 2014 to September 2015, Australians gambled away AU$24.1 billion (US$17.38 billion), a 6 percent year-on-year increase.
Singapore came in second on the list, with almost half its gambling losses in casinos largely patronized by foreigners. Casinos account for only a quarter of gambling losses in New Zealand and a fifth in Australia, the Herald reported.
“Even though we have gone down, we are still high in world terms,” said Graeme Ramsey, CEO of New Zealand’s Problem Gambling Foundation. “There is no history of gambling before Europeans arrived in New Zealand, but in our early history we had huge amounts of gambling.”
He said gambling “exploded in the 1980s with the introduction of pokie machines from Australia.”
H2s statistics suggest total losses of $2.3 billion for 2015, up from the Internal Affairs figure of $2.1 billion for 2014. H2’s estimate factored in estimated Kiwi gambling on offshore betting websites.
Finland has dropped from third to fifth place on the list, and the U.S. and Ireland have risen to third and fourth places.
