This report presents information on the allocation, to authorised purposes, of non-casino gaming machine profits. It is based on three surveys that gathered information relating to the years 1996, 1999/2000 and 2005.
The total amount players spent (ie lost) on non-casino gaming machines (ie gaming machine revenue) rose from around $197 million in 1995/96 to around $450 million in 1999/2000. Gaming machine revenue subsequently peaked at around $1,035 million in 2003/04, before declining to around $906 million in 2005/06.
Largely as a result of these changes in revenue, the amount gaming machine societies allocated to authorised purposes increased from more than $151 million in 1999/2000 (the equivalent of over $169 million in 2005 dollars) to more than $317 million in 2005.
Around 85% of the funding allocated to authorised purposes in 2005 was allocated by the societies that operate gaming machines in commercial venues, most of it by way of grants to wider community purposes. The number of grants did not increase much over this ve-year period, but the average size of the grants did. In 2005, six individual grants were for amounts of $1 million or more. Typically large grants were to help pay for signi cant community facilities.
The societies that operate gaming machines in commercial venues allocated a much larger proportion of their available funding to the social and community services sector in 2005 than they did in 2000 (up from 29% in 2000 to 40% in 2005). Conversely, they allocated a much smaller proportion to sports and physical activities in 2005 (47% in 2005, down from 60% in 2000). However, the sports and physical activities sector was still the largest single category of recipient in 2005.
The authorised purposes to which the societies that operate gaming machines in commercial venues allocated funding were more diverse in 2005 than in 2000. However, this increased diversity typically did not reduce the amount of funding for any category of purpose. The amount of funding available in 2005 was approximately double the amount that was available in 2000. As a result, in 2005 almost every category of purpose received more money in real (in ation-adjusted) terms than it did in 2000.
In 2005, the societies that operated gaming machines in commercial venues allocated more funding to recipients in Auckland City than to recipients in any other territorial authority district, but Auckland City was only second on a per capita basis. Recipients in Invercargill City received the highest amount of authorised purpose funding, if territorial authority districts are compared on a per capita basis. This might have been because that district was home to two relatively large gaming machine societies that focused on funding purposes in and around Invercargill.
The number of clubs operating gaming machines in their own premises to raise funds for their own purposes has been decreasing for many years. Clubs allocate a relatively high proportion of their gaming machine revenue to authorised purposes, but almost all of this money is used for the bene t of their own members. Typically, it is used to meet operating costs of the club. The amount of funding available for clubs to allocate increased between 2000 and 2005. However, because this increase was tempered by the overall decline in the number of clubs operating gaming machines, it was relatively modest when compared to the increase in the amount allocated by the societies that operate gaming machines in commercial venues.