Researchers from Western Sydney University recently released a new paper outlining how just three areas of Western Sydney are accounting for a disproportionate amount of Sydney’s overall poker machine losses.
The paper, entitled “Luck of the draw? Inside Western Sydney’s gambling harm epidemic, contends that the suburbs of Cumberland, Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield are contributing approximately one-third of the total gambling losses for the region while comprising just 16.5 percent of Sydney’s overall population.
This phenomenon has been primarily attributed to a combination of high machine counts and low socioeconomic status in the areas, which is a point of contention for regulators and anti-gambling advocates around the world, not just in Sydney.
Tom Nance, author of the paper, said in a statement that the data from the analysis “emphatically shows that Western Sydney is the ground zero of gambling related harm. All thirteen locations of significant concern, where some of the most vulnerable are at significant risk of losing big, are in the region.”
“High levels of socio-economic disadvantage are a significant risk factor for gambling related harm,” Nance added. “This continues to play out in real-time in Western Sydney where the frontlines of the gambling related harm epidemic mirror its most disadvantaged local areas.”
The Fairfield neighborhood in particular was noted as being especially problematic, as the research contends that there is one machine available for every 55 residents. In the previous 12-month period, Western Sydney added 169 new machines, according to the paper.
Overall, the Western Sydney region as a whole loses approximately AUD$9 million per day in bars and clubs, the researchers said.
“Over three-quarters of these locations are defined as being in the top decile in Sydney for both disadvantage and electronic gaming machine saturation, and are home to at least one pub or club that is in the top decile for profits from gambling,”‘ Nance said.
