Annual poker spend drops 4% in New Zealand

Licence holder numbers fell from 359 to 353, venue numbers dropped from 1403 to 1367 and the number of gaming machines from 18,001 to 17,542.

For the 12 months ending March 2013, expenditure was down 4% from us$ 865.4 million to us$ 828.7 million, and spending dropped from us$ 214.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 to us$ 192.7 million in the first quarter of this year.

Problem Gambling Foundation CEO Graeme Ramsey believed the decline was largely due to people's growing awareness of the harm caused by pokies. "What it's telling us is that the trend that we've seen for some time - albeit with a couple of minor blips - is still continuing,'' he said. "From our point of view that's good news and I think it's indicative that people are more aware of the dangers that pokie machines pose.

"The issue for us is we know that at least 40 % of the money that is lost on machines comes from people who are at risk or who have problems, and about 70 % of the people that we see have problems with pokie machines, not other forms of gambling.''

The amount spent on other forms of gambling, like sports betting, was increasing, so the total amount gambled in New Zealand each year remained static at about us$ 2 billion.