The worst time of night for problem gamblers has been revealed – by accident

The independent panel advising the Minns government on gambling reform stopped short of recommending a halt to late-night poker machine play in its draft report, despite a taxpayer-funded study showing that people who played after midnight were significantly more likely to be experiencing gambling problems.

A Roy Morgan Research study that linked late-night play to severe gambling behaviour was accidentally updated on the Liquor and Gaming NSW website on Monday when it was intended to have been archived.

But its publication has put fresh focus on the association between late-night poker machine playing and gambling harm, which is emerging as a key issue in gambling reform.

The gambling regulator became aware on Monday that the study – originally published in May 2023 – had been reposted to its website when it was picked up by a media monitoring company and removed it from the site. A spokesman said it was an “administrative error”.

Commissioned by the NSW government in 2022 to investigate the impact of late-night poker machine playing on gambler behaviour, the researchers found late-night play was strongly linked to problematic gambling behaviour.

The risk noticeably increased after midnight, with nearly two-thirds of those who gambled between 2am and 8am experiencing significant negative consequences. More than 22 per cent were classified as problem gamblers.

People who gamble on poker machines between 2am and 8am were significantly more likely to be experiencing gambling harm.Credit: Janie Barrett

But a draft version of the gambling reform panel’s report to government expressed support for the current six-hour shutdown of poker machines, starting no later than 4am, with all existing variations of the shutdown to be repealed. The government is yet to release the final report.

The variations allow venues to claim exemptions from the shutdown on various grounds, including “hardship” if they can successfully argue to the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority [ILGA] that they are losing patrons to other venues. These exemptions continue in perpetuity.

In 2022, ILGA approved 12 applications for extended trading hours for gaming machines and refused one. In 2023, it approved three, partially approved three and refused nine.

Liquor and Gaming NSW data indicates that hotels with extended trading hours in metropolitan NSW earn around double the gaming machine profits of those with standard trading hours.

STRS Consultant Services statistician Matthew Stevens, who worked on the Roy Morgan study, said the later at night that people played the pokies, the more likely they were to be experiencing gambling harm.

“It was really, really clear,” Stevens said. “There really isn’t much demand at all [for gambling venues to be open after midnight] and the demand that is there is from people at the higher end of problem gambling.

“But if you bring in gambling cards with set limits, it doesn’t matter when venues are open. They can be open 24 hours because once people hit that limit, they can’t gamble any more.”

Independent panel members are prevented by confidentiality agreements from commenting on the gambling reform report until it is released publicly. Their draft report proposed a gambling regime that would require every poker machine player to open a personal gaming account linked to a central database, with default spending limits that they could change or over-ride.

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