The Melbourne Footy Club Announces It’ll Ditch Its Pokie Machines By 2022

Big news coming out of the glorious world of FOOTY today, with the Melbourne Demons administration announcing a bold plan to withdraw the club from any financial interests attached to the gaming industry.

Club bosses fronted media today to reveal the plan, confirming revenue yielded from club-owned pokies will cease by 2022.

Melbourne previously held pokies licenses at the Leighoak Club, which it has agreed to sell to the Moonee Valley Racing Club in a deal that will come into effect from July 31st. Meanwhile their remaining gaming entitlements at the Bentleigh Club will cease when their current agreement expires in 2022.

The announcement is a huge one not only for the Demons, but for how AFL clubs generate revenue. Of the Melbourne-based franchises, only North Melbourne is currently completely free of pokies and gambling-related revenue streams. All eight other sides in Victoria generate cash from gaming.

Neither of the two expansion franchises, Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, rely on gaming for revenue, and both Western Australian sides, West Coast and Fremantle, are also pokies-free.

There is a growing push among anti-gambling advocates for all AFL clubs to move away from gaming revenue, and Melbourne announcing their move today stands as the first major club to begin the process of distancing themselves from what has previously been a bedrock of football club’s cashflow.

Chairman Glen Bartlett delivered a statement to media, explaining the decision was not made with any other club in mind, but that it was nonetheless important for how they plan to take the club forward in the future.

The announcement to exit the gaming industry is a significant day for the Melbourne Football Club. Gaming isn’t our core business and whilst it has been a financial imperative to operate within this space in the past, we feel the time was right to take action to exit the industry.

The club is in the strongest financial position it has ever been in, and with our members support, we are well placed to grow football-related income and to refocus our business to make the transition from our reliance on gaming to ensure that we are financially strong and stable for our next generation of members.

The club is confident that it secured the best commercial outcome while also prioritising the community sentiment towards gaming machines. This is an important day for the club and there has been a substantial amount of work to achieve this result.

 The AFL had not commented directly on Melbourne’s announcement at the time of writing.

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