Victoria reconsiders gambling spending limits

The Victoria government is reconsidering a measure that would impose maximum losses and time limits for slot machine players at Crown Resorts.

Australia.- When Victoria’s Royal Commission found Crown Resorts unsuitable to hold a licence for its Crown Melbourne casino in October, it allowed Crown to keep its licence under stricter conditions, but Judge Raymond Finkelstein, who led the inquiry made 33 recommendations, which included proposing mandatory limits on the time and money customers can spend on Crown Melbourne’s 2,628 gaming machines.

Victoria’s Royal Commission found the government’s voluntary advance payment scheme YourPlay was “unsuccessful”, with low acceptance rates and no action when spending limits were reached. Finkelstein suggested that the YourPlay system should be replaced by “a full, mandatory, binding pre-commitment system for Australian residents to gamble with EGMs at Melbourne casinos.

He recommended that players would be able to set a weekly and monthly loss limit as well as a limit on the amount of time they can spend on EGMs. 

The Victorian government supported those recommendations “in principle”, but the proposals to limit the time and money spent on slots are now facing opposition from the Department of Justice and the Department of Community Safety. It’s noted that a similar system launched in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2012, was abandoned in 2014 because it did little to address gambling addiction rates.

The Victorian government is expected to discuss responsible gambling regulations again later this year.