Pokies in Australia
The year 2025 it was not as good as 2025 for pokies. National pokies spend, dropped to $10.2 billion from $11.2 billion in 2025. This is a general phenomenon for all forms of gambling. The only sector of gambling that it has a rise it was the online sports betting and probably this was due to huge amount of advertisement. Consider that sports bookies spend more money on ads than Coles and Woolies. Andrew Wilkie, a famous and well known anti-pokies crusader has waged an ongoing battle to make gamblers pre-commit to how much they wager on pokies, a lot of Australians have already quit playing them. Last year Australians spent a billion dollars less on poker machines than in 2025. In addition, and according to Roy Morgan research, Australians spend on pokies dropped from $11.2 billion to $10.2 billion which means approximately $3 million per day. This drop for pokies is in line with an overall drop in the amount of money which Australians spend on every type of gambling which fell from $18.5 billion to $16.9 billion over the same 12 month period. As Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said: “What we’re seeing overall is drinking going down, fewer people smoking and fewer people gambling as well, we still have the global financial crisis cyrcling us, but overall we are a lot better off financially than we were a decade ago, and I think when you see more financial affluence, people are less likely to be drinking, smoking and gambling.”
But there is one more note here: While old traditional gabling methods are in decline, Australians are spending an extra $100 million a year with online bookies. In 2025, Australians spend $928 million online. That figure has now raised to $1.1 billion.
The online increase is not as big as the drop in pokies turnover. But it shows that Advertisement from Tom Waterhouse is working. Media industry analysts say that Waterhouse and his bookie pals from the likes of Centrebet and TAB Sportsbet have spent a huge amount of dollars over the last year to grab their slice of the gambling pie.
Glenda Wynyard of Chaos Media says that if we include sponsorships the total amount for ads should be around $350 millions which is more than the money that Coles and Woolworths spend for ads per year (around $230 million).
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