Victoria Set to Debate Mandatory Carded Play Bill

A series of regulatory missteps that has embroiled Star Entertainment and Crown Resorts into year-long scrutiny, bringing at least one of the companies on the brink of bankruptcy, has now prompted Victoria to once again consider carded play as a viable option to make gambling in all of its forms safer.

Victoria Set to Debate Carded Play This Week

The idea of carded play is not new but it has had its fair share of critics. Essentially, carded play requires an establishment’s patron to use a pre-registered and configured card that will track the person’s spending habits, draw real-time reports on their financial status, and whether they can afford gambling.

This serves two purposes as it helps venues monitor whether a person is not experiencing gambling harm while also ensuring that whoever is gambling is gambling on their own, thus avoiding costly regulatory retaliation at a later date.

However, the measure has been repeatedly opposed all over Australia, with trade bodies arguing that they would be forced to treat their patrons like criminals, costing business, jobs, and contributions to the state. Star Entertainment Group and Crown Resorts have been more willing to implement the feature, however, as they seek to appease regulators.

In the case of Victoria, the bill that seeks to roll out carded play was first pitched in November and it’s due to be discussed in Parliament either today or on Friday. The bill wants to upgrade every available poker machine in the state to carded play, which will impact 26,000 such units.

These poker machines can be found mostly across pubs and clubs all over the state. In the meantime, Crown Melbourne has already implemented the measure with more than 500,000 people already signed up for carded play with the gambling major.

Crown has been fairly happy with the results achieved this way. The property said that it has been able to implement carded play seamlessly and effectively at the Melbourne property and that it has not led to a downturn in visitations specifically tied to the technology implementation.

Crown Resorts’ Carded Play Implementation Hailed as ‘Game-Changer’

Crown Resorts has taken a rather cheerful outlook. Victoria is keener than ever to move ahead with such a trial of its own and try to gauge its implications for making gambling safer. Australia has been experimenting with how to minimize gambling harm.

An idea to reduce poker machines in New South Wales has failed, however, as the plan was scrapped after it was deemed not cost-efficient to the task at hand, i.e. reducing harm.

Gambling critics have acknowledged that carded play may be the best way to shield consumers from reckless spending and help operators avoid costly enforcement actions due to oversights.

This measure may be necessary as Victorian players alone lost anything between $3 billion and $4 billion on poker machines in 2023-24.