What researchers found when they interviewed 204 pokies players at a Sydney club

Poker machine players will not use cashless gambling accounts unless they are mandatory and they will need to include strong harm-minimisation measures such as spending limits if they are to be effective, according to research conducted by one of the panel members overseeing the government’s cashless gaming trial.

University of Sydney professor Sally Gainsbury released the findings of her research on pokie players at West HQ to a gambling conference on the Gold Coast on Thursday, nine days before the government is due to receive a report on its own cashless gambling trial.

Sally Gainsbury is the director of the Gambling Treatment and Research Centre at the University of Sydney.

Most surveyed players said they would not use the technology if it was voluntary due to privacy concerns or the ease of continuing to play with cash.

Some were concerned that cashless play would accelerate their gambling spend, leading the researchers to conclude that binding spending limits, time-outs and statement summaries would be a necessary component of the new system.

“There’s no benefit to a cashless system unless harm minimisation is integrated into it,” Gainsbury said. “People don’t necessarily like change, but if you make the system simple and easy to sign up – similar to the way that they got on board with QR codes and vaccination checks – it will minimise harm in the vast majority of players.”

Gainsbury is one of two academics who sat on the independent expert panel that oversaw the government’s cashless gaming trial, which was intended to provide an evidence base for any technology that might be legislated but hampered by the withdrawal of half the venues and more than 80 per cent of its active participants. Just 32 active participants remained to the end.

The panel is due to deliver its report to the government by November 30, but the experts were split over the merits of the draft recommendations. The government is already planning the optics for the policy to be dropped.

A ClubsNSW source told the Herald earlier this month that a senior advisor in Premier Chris Minns’ office had warned the organisation that the government would be giving it a wide berth in coming months to avoid speculation that it was acting at the bidding of clubs.

Earlier this week the Tasmanian government announced it had indefinitely delayed the introduction of what was to have been a nation-leading mandatory pre-commitment card for poker machine play, following pushback from the hospitality industry. Premier Jeremy Rockliff told his parliament it was important to “get the balance right”.

Gainsbury has signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevents her from commenting on the NSW panel’s recommendations. She said the timing of her study’s release at the National Association of Gambling Studies was coincidental, and she had considered sitting on the findings, but that may have been perceived as suppressing scientific research.

The objective of her study, which was funded by West HQ, was to inform policy and practices of implementing account-based gaming. It began before the government’s cashless gaming trial commenced and is yet to be peer-reviewed.

Researchers interviewed 204 people who had played the pokies at West HQ in the 30-days previously, and analysed de-identified customer account data for 11,389 venue members.

It found that people experiencing financial difficulties and those on the lowest incomes were most likely to engage in problematic gambling.

Nearly 60 per cent of the surveyed players said they were unlikely to use an account-based system, while a quarter said they were likely to use one and the remaining 16 per cent were neutral.

But people who reported moderate or severe levels of gambling harm constituted two-thirds of those who said they intended to use the technology, indicating that the target audience saw the benefits of the system.

One of the most notable barriers to people’s intention to use the technology were privacy concerns, including the fear of data breaches or the government monitoring their behaviour.

“I feel like it’s just another level of trying to control us,” one participant said. “And I don’t like it.”

A cyberattack on an IT provider to hospitality venues earlier this year resulted in the personal details of customers at 17 venues being compromised. Last year, a small cashless gaming trial at Wests Newcastle was aborted in its final stages when became the target of a ransomware attack.

Gainsbury said customers’ privacy concerns suggested any change would need to be accompanied by a clear communication strategy.

“These aren’t insurmountable issues,” she said. “It’s possible to verify identification without actually storing the information. There are technology solutions.”