James Packer, Australia’s biggest pokies mogul. Despite recently relinquishing his majority share in the Crown Resorts group, there is no bigger name in the Australian casino industry than James Packer. A pokies manufacturer with ties to James Packer’s Crown Resorts has launched the first applications in Australia to roll out a revolutionary new style of poker machine — “skill-based” gaming machines — aimed at attracting younger gamblers. The best option for Australian Players is Fair Go because of the excellent services the online casino provides to its players and the fact that it is especially targeted to Aussie players. Fair Go offers a secure and safe platform where you can James Packer Casino Sydney play your favorite online game easily and win real money in the process.

When is a casino not a casino? According to NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, who last week approved James Packer’s Crown Limited bid to establish Sydney’s second casino, a casino isn’t a casino without pokies. Instead, Crown has been granted approval to develop what O’Farrell calls a “VIP gaming facility”.

Rather than relying on local pokie players to provide a revenue stream, the proposed 70-storey venue at Barangaroo has ambitions to attract lucrative “high-roller” gamblers. These gamblers would, according to Crown, choose to gamble in Sydney rather than Macau, Singapore or other casino hubs closer to home. This will be no small achievement. As Packer himself noted: “the economics on this project are tough”.

Given the challenges of attracting an elite group of Asian gamblers to Sydney in the face of stiff, more accessible and more impressive casino developments overseas, it is highly unlikely that the Barangaroo casino will remain pokie-free in the long term. Australia’s previous experience here is instructive.

The opening of Australia’s first casino in 1973 - Wrest Point Casino in Hobart - was so controversial that it was only approved after a state referendum. Even then, one of the development conditions was a prohibition on poker machines. However, after the downturn in the 1980s, the state government authorised Federal Hotels to install pokies in both Wrest Point and its sister casino in Launceston.

In 2008-09, the most recent year for which figures are available, 89% of gambling revenue at the two casinos came from losses on poker machines. The vision of Asian high-rollers flying to Launceston to gamble may seem absurd with the benefit of hindsight, but it was very much part of the marketing of the casino development to the Australian public.

The reneged promises for pokie-free casinos are not limited to Tasmania (see table below). The casinos in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Canberra were all proposed on a pokie-free basis. Only Canberra Casino remains pokie-free, in part perhaps because of the potential effect on the revenues of local clubs, who are major donors to the ACT branch of the Labor Party.

The Australian experience reveals that the casinos who have presented rich, gambling tourists as their target market to gain approvals have all failed to achieve their speculative projections. All Australian casinos - bar Canberra - rely on local gamblers playing pokies.

The experience of Packer’s flagship Crown Casino in Melbourne also suggests that running a casino without poker machines would be fraught. According to the Productivity Commission’s estimates and Crown’s annual reports, in 2008-09 Crown Casino made more money from the pokies than from VIPs, receiving an estimated A$376 million in profits from pokies compared to A$330 million from high-rollers, international or otherwise.

In the same financial year, Crown Casino took A$479 million in profit from gamblers on the main gaming floor, mostly from table games. While some of these gamblers may be tourists, Melburnians make up the majority of these gamblers, to the extent that Crown refers to this segment of their operations as “local gaming”.

Indeed, two days after the announcement that his bid for Barangaroo was successful, Packer put paid to the idea that the casino will be underwritten by super-rich tourists. He noted that minimum bets would be just $20 and that he expects to receive 50% of revenue from Sydneysiders.

The spectre of pokies also hovers over Barangaroo’s building plans. John Redmond, the CEO of Crown’s Sydney rival Echo Entertainment stated that the plans for the lower floor of the new casino are equivalent in size to two football fields: the sort of space required for banks of pokies rather than private VIP lounges.

When pokies do inevitably arrive at Barangaroo, it will largely be the locals who pay the price, both in terms of underwriting the financial viability of the project and coping with gambling-related harms. In Australia, poker machine gambling is more closely associated with gambling problems than any other form gambling. The Productivity Commission estimated in 2010 that 40% of poker machine revenue nationally is derived from problem gamblers.

Our recent research suggests that pokies in casinos are even more harmful than those in smaller clubs and pubs, with pokie players at the NT’s casinos reporting twice the rate of gambling problems as those in smaller venues.

If Crown’s latest venture is to be a financial success, it is likely to ultimately come at the cost of the well-being of a large number of Sydneysiders.

Tourism gamble?: James Packer says Australia should invest in more casinos to attract middle class Chinese and boost tourism. Picture: Stuart McevoySource:Herald Sun

CROWN chairman James Packer has admitted he gets upset when people accuse him of making millions of dollars from gamblers' misery.

The billionaire businessman said while he had developed a fairly thick skin it was upsetting to be accused of profiting from others' gambling problems.

'I obviously do get upset at that,' Mr Packer told Fairfax Radio.

'It's not nice when people go to your character.'

James Packer Online Pokies Images

The Crown boss said he'd prefer to argue the issues rather than the people.

He said casinos were his biggest business interest 'by far' and he was proud of that fact.

'I get my back up against the wall when people start spinning the line, 'Why are you peddling evil?' Mr Packer said.

'This perception that the only people that come to Crown are helpless victims and we are just sitting there preying on them - I reject that absolutely.'

A self-confessed gambler at the race track and blackjack table, he said that suggestion was spin from the 'latte set', but customers visited Crown Casino and Burswood Casino in Perth 'because they enjoy it'.

Mr Packer weighed into the pokies debate yesterday when he argued the Gillard Government's proposed betting limits wouldn't reduce problem gambling.

In response, anti-pokies MP Andrew Wilkie said Crown's profits came at a terrible human cost, mentioning the suicide of one punter at Packer's Crown Casino in Melbourne after he 'blew the lot on the pokies'.

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon compared Mr Packer's stance on pokies reform to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's position on democracy.

Mr Packer today said he was particularly disappointed Mr Wilkie raised the May suicide of the 45-year-old man in a hotel room the casino had provided to him for free.

He said Crown didn't want to fight the Gillard Government because 'we know if there's a fight we will lose'.

Rather, the company wanted a say in how problem gambling was tackled.

James Packer Online Pokies Free

'The implementation has got to be right and that's what we hope we can have a small influence in,' Mr Packer said, adding that at a minimum Labor should trial mandatory pre-commitment before rolling it out nationally.

Mr Packer said the scheme would result in Asian tourists going to Macau, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia to avoid having to 'fill in forms' before playing the pokies.

But the 44-year-old isn't confident the Government will take up the suggestion of a trial.

'Is the Government listening to us?' he said today.

Free Online Pokies

'The Government is trying to make sure they are there tomorrow.'

James Packer Today

Originally published asPokie attacks upset me, admits hurt Packer