Carlton publicly says it will look at getting out of pokies industry, but does the club mean it?

Rivers of gold have flowed into Princes Park for decades thanks to generous gaming licence entitlements gifted to the club, so when Blues bosses say they’re looking at exiting the lucrative industry, do they really mean it?

Do the Blues really want to get out of pokies?

Carlton is on a collision course with one of its greatest benefactors — billionaire pokies king Bruce Mathieson.

Blues bosses revealed at Monday night’s annual general meeting that they were “getting closer” to joining rival clubs in exiting the lucrative poker machine industry.

Rivers of gold have flowed into Princes Park for decades thanks to generous gaming licence entitlements gifted to the club by Mathieson, a former Blues director and influential powerbroker, who helped install president Mark LoGiudice over the top of former Blues boss Stephen Kernahan six years ago.

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Do the Blues really want to get out of pokies?

“The reality of the situation is we haven’t been in a position where we could have made that call, but we are getting closer to being in a position where our non-traditional revenues make up for that money,” chief executive Cain Liddle told members when grilled about the club’s pokies dependency.

“And the big (poker machine) revenue number is off-set significantly by what is about a 90 or 91 per cent return to player.

“So good point made and point taken on board.”

Mathieson declined to comment, but the Gold Coast-based billionaire has been privately assured the club has no intention of off-loading its money-spinning machines.

“They knew they were going to get questions from the do-gooders, so they just said that they would look into it,” one observer said.

A Carlton spokesperson said the club had nothing further to add on the poker machine issue.

Pokies king Bruce Mathieson has received assurances from the club.

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The push for Victorian clubs to exit the pokies sector has been led by AFL commission chairman Richard Goyder, who declared after taking office in 2017 that he “hates” pokies and that the “custodians of the game” needed to tackle the game’s reliance on the industry.

Mathieson responded at the time by saying AFL clubs would be dead without poker machine revenue.

“Hawthorn would never have survived if it hadn’t been through the poker machines,” Mathieson said.

“I set up Waverley Gardens for Hawthorn (in the late 1990s). They had nothing. I funded the whole thing, every penny of it.

“They came to me and asked me if I could get them a venue and I said, ‘Yes, I would’.”

Liddle told a Blues member who challenged the board to get out of poker machines on Monday night: “I can gauge from the room’s response that you are not the only person who feels that way.

“I think we have said for a number of years now that we need to get a business model up and functioning and we need to work on clearing our debt. Now, they are things we are well on the way to doing … and those non-traditional revenues that we have been heavily focusing (on) … give us the opportunity, moving forward, to make decisions.”

Despite its strong anti-pokies stance, the AFL last month signed a five-year, $40 million deal with corporate bookmaker, Beteasy.