Club revenue and pokies

[bloodspirit]

Good on the Shinboners. Despite their relatively lowly revenue they have apparently recorded a profit for the 8th time in 9 years: North in the black again with $470K profit - AFL.com.au. I wonder whether their facilities need refreshing.

[Mug Punter]

While I totally concur with the above assessment of the evil of pokies I would like to add another element on them. This is essentially the revenue versus profit argument. When one considers the above graph it would seem that the Swans are a middling club when it comes to financial performance. This in fact is not correct because while some clubs earn substantial revenue from this source it is also a relatively low margin business. This is because a high volume of revenue is returned to punters, the govt takes a cut and there are significant fixed costs in running a pokies venue I.e. Cost of leasing machines and the venue. These costs are not shown in the above table.

The upshot is that while some Clubs like Hawthorn are probably doing very nicely given their high revenues in the area others like Port, Adelaide, Rich, Dogs and the Saints are probably not making much out of it at all after extracting these costs. So our financial performance overall is probably in that group below the Big 4 of Pies, Hawks, WCE and Essendon. A long way from the bad old days of the early 1990s when we would have been at the very right end of any financial tables.


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You are not right there. The Pokie revenue IS profit, it's not what the poor buggers put in, it is the consolidated losses of the gambling addicts that prop up these Melbourne clubs.

What it also does is illustrate how far ahead the WA teams, in the only state of Australia that doesn't have pokies (and they don't seem to be doing too bad without them), would be if the Vic clubs ran ethical businesses.

Almost in three dollars coming into the Hawthorn Football Club is from the pockets of punters who drain their salary or savings into their steel traps. Absolutely disgraceful

[Ludwig]

What it also does is illustrate how far ahead the WA teams, in the only state of Australia that doesn't have pokies (and they don't seem to be doing too bad without them), would be if the Vic clubs ran ethical businesses.

Thanks to the lack of pokies West Australians have so much more to spend on drugs.

[Nico]

WA is not totally free. Burwood Casino has them.

[AnnieH]

Thanks to the lack of pokies West Australians have so much more to spend on drugs.

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

[mcs]

You are not right there. The Pokie revenue IS profit, it's not what the poor buggers put in, it is the consolidated losses of the gambling addicts that prop up these Melbourne clubs.

What it also does is illustrate how far ahead the WA teams, in the only state of Australia that doesn't have pokies (and they don't seem to be doing too bad without them), would be if the Vic clubs ran ethical businesses.

Almost in three dollars coming into the Hawthorn Football Club is from the pockets of punters who drain their salary or savings into their steel traps. Absolutely disgraceful

Pokies are a scourge on society, and I'd be happy to 'blow them up' and ban the whole lot of them. I think the WA strategy, with them only in the casino, is the way to go if we must have them. The way they have decimated the pub and club scene in NSW and Victoria in particular is very sad, and they are not a net 'beneficiary' to the community that the club sector in particular suggests they are.

The AFL should help clubs like the wees and poos wean themselves off this reliance ASAP and also give up the links to gambling more generally. But that's about as likely as the AFL admitting just how @@@@@@ over we got in the GF in search of the 'fairytale'.

[R-1]

While I totally concur with the above assessment of the evil of pokies I would like to add another element on them. This is essentially the revenue versus profit argument. When one considers the above graph it would seem that the Swans are a middling club when it comes to financial performance. This in fact is not correct because while some clubs earn substantial revenue from this source it is also a relatively low margin business. This is because a high volume of revenue is returned to punters, the govt takes a cut and there are significant fixed costs in running a pokies venue I.e. Cost of leasing machines and the venue. These costs are not shown in the above table.

The upshot is that while some Clubs like Hawthorn are probably doing very nicely given their high revenues in the area others like Port, Adelaide, Rich, Dogs and the Saints are probably not making much out of it at all after extracting these costs. So our financial performance overall is probably in that group below the Big 4 of Pies, Hawks, WCE and Essendon. A long way from the bad old days of the early 1990s when we would have been at the very right end of any financial tables.


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Just to clarify the revenue figure is the amount lost by punters to the license holders. It's net takings, not gross amount bet.

You're right that revenue isn't the whole picture, because assets have a cost to maintain. The post I linked also contains assets/liabilities, and profit and loss for each club as shown here:



Clubs are mostly getting a few million from their machines though.

I think I worked out Brisbane are spending 12m on their club venue and getting 16m income from it, 15m being pokies takings. Vic clubs might be a bit less profitable, and SA will be substantially less so.

[Aprilbr]

Thanks for the clarification on the pokies.


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[Ludwig]

Fremantle are to be commended that they are able to raise all that bail money without having to rely on pokies revenue.

[Dosser]

Fremantle are to be commended that they are able to raise all that bail money without having to rely on pokies revenue.

I hear the club has now moved their training sessions to the exercise yard so that most of their players can participate.

[bloodspirit]

I was in the car listening to ABC radio just after 3 this afternoon and Stephen Mayne (Walkley Award winning journalist, Crikey founder and former consultant of the Australian Shareholder Association Stephen Mayne - Wikipedia) was interviewed about the influence of pokies and gambling on government, especially in NSW. Mayne said that the AFL is making some tentative efforts to combat the destructive influences of gambling under Gill (whereas the NRL are hopelessly in the gambling industry's thrall - Canterbury Bulldogs are apparently almost entirely dependent on pokies revenue). However, Mayne pointed out that Andrew Pridham, in his role as Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking for Australia at NY based bank Moelis & Co, is "fronting" the acquisition of Redcape (a group of gambling pubs that earn a lot of revenue in poor areas of Sydney (like Fairfield) causing particularly high levels of losses per pokie machine and bragging in their prospectus about taking advantage of lax regulations in NSW). He suggested this is quite embarrassing for Andrew Pridham and I tend to agree. Andrew Pridham's contact details at Moelis are published on their website [email protected] and T: +61 2 8288 5537: Sydney – Moelis & Company.

I guess big business gets its hands dirty and if we probe the work of various board members we will inevitably find other distasteful details. Even still, this is fairly high profile and, if it is being discussed on ABC Radio Drive segment, has the potential to embarrass our club significantly - albeit not likely to lead to the same pressure on Pridham that Worner faced after revelations about his (quite different and illegal) scandalous conduct. Watch this space to see if there is any more news about this.

[Mug Punter]

I was in the car listening to ABC radio just after 3 this afternoon and Stephen Mayne (Walkley Award winning journalist, Crikey founder and former consultant of the Australian Shareholder Association Stephen Mayne - Wikipedia) was interviewed about the influence of pokies and gambling on government, especially in NSW. Mayne said that the AFL is making some tentative efforts to combat the destructive influences of gambling under Gill (whereas the NRL are hopelessly in the gambling industry's thrall - Canterbury Bulldogs are apparently almost entirely dependent on pokies revenue). However, Mayne pointed out that Andrew Pridham, in his role as Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking for Australia at NY based bank Moelis & Co, is "fronting" the acquisition of Redcape (a group of gambling pubs that earn a lot of revenue in poor areas of Sydney (like Fairfield) causing particularly high levels of losses per pokie machine and bragging in their prospectus about taking advantage of lax regulations in NSW). He suggested this is quite embarrassing for Andrew Pridham and I tend to agree. Andrew Pridham's contact details at Moelis are published on their website [email protected] and T: +61 2 8288 5537: Sydney ? Moelis & Company.

I guess big business gets its hands dirty and if we probe the work of various board members we will inevitably find other distasteful details. Even still, this is fairly high profile and, if it is being discussed on ABC Radio Drive segment, has the potential to embarrass our club significantly - albeit not likely to lead to the same pressure on Pridham that Worner faced after revelations about his (quite different and illegal) scandalous conduct. Watch this space to see if there is any more news about this.

I think you are drawing somewhat of a long bow with your issues with Andrew Pridham and I am as anti-gambling as anyone you will meet. But I must admit if his firm has it's nose in the trough with the gambling industry, as it would appear, then I don't think it reflects well on that firm. I'm not sure what, if any, ownership role Andrew has in that global firm or what his direct involvement in that deal is. Or what influence he could have had over it?

I suspect he is no different from any other greedy merchant banker or businessman and that all he sees in poker machines is profit when all many of us see is human misery.

I also think any comparison to Worner, whose behaviour on any moral, governance or legal perspective was appalling, is not relevant.

The whole issue of the Swans and the gambling dollar is a sleeper for mine. We have a benign dictatorship on our board, the ultimate Boys' club that we are all quite happy to accept (me included) as long as they listen to the members, stay in touch with community expectations and standards and discharge their duties responsibly. And on that front in recent years they have been faultless.

But the reality is that if there was an issue that the board made that we as fans fundamentally and passionately disagreed with we have no real opportunity to vote in directors to right that wrong. And we should have that ability.

If the board takes on even one single poker machine it will be interesting to see how we react as fans. I suspect that most of us would be appalled but I wonder how many of us will be prepared to make some noise and fight the decision and demand a say. I'd like to think I would but I suspect that there would be a large amount of apathy

[KTigers]

I think what Andrew Pridham does in his day job is his business. Basically he is the CEO of Moelis Australia. Amongst other things they put
together investment funds, and one of those funds has bought a "gaming focused hotel group" called Redcape. Redcape own 26 pubs, 18 of
which are in the top 200 "gaming establishments" in NSW. Will Moelis & Pridham and the investors in the fund make money from poker
machines? Yes. I'd imagine they'd be pretty disappointed if they didn't. What they are doing is completely legal. But it's not for everyone,
some people wouldn't feel comfortable making money from an investment like this. He is obviously OK with it, and that's his choice, but
I'm not sure how that impacts on the Swans.

[mcs]

I think you are drawing somewhat of a long bow with your issues with Andrew Pridham and I am as anti-gambling as anyone you will meet. But I must admit if his firm has it's nose in the trough with the gambling industry, as it would appear, then I don't think it reflects well on that firm. I'm not sure what, if any, ownership role Andrew has in that global firm or what his direct involvement in that deal is. Or what influence he could have had over it?

I suspect he is no different from any other greedy merchant banker or businessman and that all he sees in poker machines is profit when all many of us see is human misery.

I also think any comparison to Worner, whose behaviour on any moral, governance or legal perspective was appalling, is not relevant.

The whole issue of the Swans and the gambling dollar is a sleeper for mine. We have a benign dictatorship on our board, the ultimate Boys' club that we are all quite happy to accept (me included) as long as they listen to the members, stay in touch with community expectations and standards and discharge their duties responsibly. And on that front in recent years they have been faultless.

But the reality is that if there was an issue that the board made that we as fans fundamentally and passionately disagreed with we have no real opportunity to vote in directors to right that wrong. And we should have that ability.

If the board takes on even one single poker machine it will be interesting to see how we react as fans. I suspect that most of us would be appalled but I wonder how many of us will be prepared to make some noise and fight the decision and demand a say. I'd like to think I would but I suspect that there would be a large amount of apathy

Like you Mug, I'd be willing to stand up to the club in whatever way if we ever attempt to get back in on the pokies wheel of shame - I also agree we should have greater rights as members in regards to voting. I do think you are right though in terms of there probably be apathy at most.

As for the Pridham link, I concur that it is unlikely to become a significant issue at club level I don't think - unless somehow it impedes on his ability to act in the best interests of the Swans when acting within his role.

[Blood Fever]

Like you Mug, I'd be willing to stand up to the club in whatever way if we ever attempt to get back in on the pokies wheel of shame - I also agree we should have greater rights as members in regards to voting. I do think you are right though in terms of there probably be apathy at most.

As for the Pridham link, I concur that it is unlikely to become a significant issue at club level I don't think - unless somehow it impedes on his ability to act in the best interests of the Swans when acting within his role.

Didn't members supporters play a role in the demise of Robbie Waterhouse as a sponsor? Would not like to see this type of revenue at the club as distict from the merchant bank. Was involved in printing some years ago when the company I worked for was involved withe setting up of Crown Casino. Car park was 90 per cent full of old bombs reflecting socio economic status of owners. I know the argument about freedom of choice etc but it left a sour taste in my mouth.