What’s killing off your local pokies?
SMALL community clubs are trying to offload their poker machines - but no one wants them.
Enoggera Bowls Club has been trying to sell its 17 gaming machine entitlements for the past year.
The club's old gaming machines were dumped but the gaming machine entitlements - clubs need an entitlement for each machine - are sitting gathering dust.
And the club is not alone. Last year the Queensland Government held a tender for gaming machine entitlement tender for 85 entitlements. None sold.
Currently listed for sale on the Clubs Queensland website are entitlements currently held by the Gracemere Lake Golf Club, West Toowoomba Bowls Club and Moore Park Beach Bowls & Sports Club.
Brisbane District Bowls Association project officer Neil Peach said it was a very bleak future for clubs with less than 40 machines.
"People who play them like new machines and they like lots of them and 17 doesn't cut it," he said.
"A lot of small clubs don't think there is the value in these now and with the government proposing to bring two major gaming sites online in the next two years the future for small clubs and their gaming machines is very bleak," he said.
Clubs Queensland CEO Doug Flockhart said clubs were facing uncertainty over the impact of the Queens Wharf casino and whether there would be a second casino on the Gold Coast.
"Wearing my Queenslander hat, Queen's Wharf will be a great development for Queensland; wearing my Clubs Queensland hat it is a category killer.
"Reports we have done identify that 80-90 per cent of casino business is locals so therefore adding casino products is only going to cannibalise the current market.
"There are no new customers"
Enoggera Bowls Club crunched the numbers on adding more pokies before redeveloping its Pickering Street site to include to include commercial tenants, a children's gym, pilates and other physical activities for older people, two undercover synthetic bowls greens and a Cafe 63.
Mr Peach said Cafe 63 would not have come on board if there were poker machines.
"Venues that are working for gaming have got at least 40 to 50 machines," Mr Peach said. "So we learned that if we wanted to be successful we would need to have a lot more.
"But the reason we were interested in gaming was as a a sideline for members to be able to play the pokies a little.
"When it became that you have to convert your whole business almost into investing in gaming we went hold on we are not members of a club trying to extract more dollars out of working people."
Gaming machine entitlements do not expire however if it is believed that the licensee has ceased to use the premises for the conduct of gaming Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation can cancel or suspend its gaming license.
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