Late last year, after a lengthy appeal process, the Western Bulldogs AFL club and its partner Tattersall’s succeeded in gaining necessary approval from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for their new pokie venue in the inner-western Melbourne suburb of Maribyrnong, abutting Footscray, Braybrook and Maidstone.

For those who don’t know Melbourne, suffice to say that despite recent yuppification, these remain among Victoria’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Maribyrnong City Council has now advised that it won’t appeal these decisions to the Supreme Court.

I doubt that many people think the western suburbs needs any new pokie gambling opportunities, let alone a new purpose-built, football branded gaming venue with 70 state-of-the-art machines and the gambling management grunt of Tattersall’s behind it. Granted, the proposal will lead to a reduction of 11 in the number of pokies in Maribyrnong. However, the new development will replace the Bulldog’s old-fashioned grandstand venue with a state-of-the-art facility.

The old venue didn’t perform very well, with its machines averaging revenue of a very modest $33,000 p.a. in 2007-08. The new one is likely to yield close to $100,000 per pokie per year. So even though the number of EGMs in Maribyrnong will go down, it is most unlikely that the amount lost by pokie users will actually decline.

I have to declare my interest. As one of the witnesses called by the Maribyrnong City Council, I pointed to concerns about public health and wellbeing created by readily available pokie gambling, and the impact of the proposal on the socio-economically disadvantaged municipality of Maribyrnong.

I also pointed to some ways in which the harmful impact of this venue could be reduced including adoption of pre-commitment systems, as subsequently recommended by the Productivity Commission’s draft report on gambling. The tribunal decided to disregard this evidence. Of course, VCAT has to apply the current law as it sees fit, and no doubt this is what the tribunal members did.

The PC’s draft report was strongly focused on the harm created by pokies, since more than 80% of problem gamblers cite pokies as their main gambling mode. The PC proposed that all pokies in Australia should be fitted with “pre-commitment” systems to permit users to set limits on their gambling, and to receive reports on how much time and money they’d spent.

The PC also proposed that pokies be modified to reduce the average amount that people could lose while using them — currently about $1200 per hour — to about $120 per hour.  The PC recognised that problem gambling isn’t just a problem for weak-willed individuals — it’s very much the product of a system carefully designed to entice people to spend as much time and money as possible on the pokies.  Modifying the way this system is configured and presented is a way to dramatically reduce the likelihood that people will get into trouble.

Victorian AFL clubs, like all the clubs suddenly conscious of sustained scrutiny by the PC and others (as Margot Saville discussed in Crikey on Friday February 12), make much of their contributions to charity and to good causes. According to official statistics lodged with the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation, Victorian AFL clubs’ community benefit statements for 2008-09 showed claims of $6.3 million in charitable donations from pokie revenue of $75.6 million — and this included in many cases AFL and VFL operating expenses (including licensing fees and team expenses). Excluding these payments, which amounted to at least $3.4 million, charitable contributions were a modest 3.8% of net gambling revenue.

Over recent years, the AFL has wholeheartedly embraced gambling as a revenue stream, mindful perhaps of the massive funds generated by the NRL club-based gambling empires that dominate working-class Sydney. AFL clubs now have individual sponsorship deals with gambling businesses (including new club-branded betting sites) and the progressive odds of one internet betting agency regularly appear on the big screen at games.

All the Victorian AFL clubs operate gambling venues (although North Melbourne’s licence is in hiatus), and Hawthorn, Geelong and Collingwood operate, or are establishing, pokie venues in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

The AFL has already experienced some of the difficulties that its close engagement with gambling can bring, having come to some grief over the implications of how “tanking” on games can affect gambling markets. One might also caution against adopting the NRL pokie club model as the way to develop the game, given that code’s difficulties in recent years.

The Victorian government has announced that pre-commitment systems will be required on all the state’s pokies by 2013, although they have been thin on the detail. If the clubs currently spruiking their commitment to communities (including the AFL and NRL clubs) were as keen on supporting communities as they claim, they could steal a march on their opposition in the gambling business, and start protecting their most loyal supporters — their members — straight away, by installing already available and effective pre-commitment systems in their clubs.

Trials in Queensland and South Australia have demonstrated that such systems work. Membership cards could easily be used as pre-commitment cards. Implementation of such a system may have some impact on revenue, given that more than 40% of pokie revenue comes from people with gambling problems, but providing a safer gambling environment will provide a marketing tool for clubs with the foresight to realise that gouging funds out of disadvantaged communities is no way to build a loyal supporter base.

Charles Livingstone is with the Department of Health Social Science at Monash University.