How pokies became the biggest gambling success in Australia

The world of gambling is a very diverse and entertaining environment that catches every gamer’s attention. From poker and blackjack – the most skill-based games, all the way to roulette and slots – the most luck-based ones, the industry has everything its customers need. That’s the reason it makes tens of billions of dollars annually.

And if one specific country can be named as the biggest lover of gambling, it’s definitely Australia. As various studies suggest, every four out of five Aussies are or have been involved in some kind of gambling. That is 80% of the whole population making a total revenue of $24 billion annually.

The biggest pokie-lovers in the world

So, the main idea is pretty straightforward: Aussies love gambling. And to go into further details, they adore slots – or as they call them, pokies. This fruit-spangled addictive game that spins its reels and your chance of winning at the same time makes Australia the biggest industry of pokies.

The country has the biggest pokies-to-population ratio in the world with currently more than 200,000 separate machines all across the country. And while this is certainly an impressive feat to begin with, it doesn’t even come close to the online pokies industry that is undergoing a whole another phase there.

Since the game is so popular among so many Aussies, and an abundance of software developers, such as the Australian Play’n Go game provider, are releasing hundreds of new pokies regularly, we thought we’d give the game its due by discussing how it became popular in Australia. But before that, let’s see how it came to existence in the first place.

The history of slots

The idea about slots – a game where a certain arrangement of symbols leads to a victory – was first conceived at the end of the XVIII century. It was a game that contained 5 drums full of 50 cards and adhering to poker principles. The game proved to be so popular that every bar in Brooklin had one or several machines – although, it had little to do with the actual slot machines.

After that, the real slot machine was created. In 1895, the American mechanic Charles Fey invented the very first slot machine called Liberty Bell. Fey took the initial game and made it much simpler by leaving just 3 reels and 5 symbols. By doing so, the payout mechanism also became much simpler and less financially damaging to the establishment.

But despite the game being so popular in the United States, it was heavily oppressed by the government. In the 1900s, the use of slot machines was banned in San Francisco, then in the whole state of Nevada, and eventually, in California where Liberty Bell was originally conceived. But the protesting movement quickly caught up with this development, finally reaching the legalization of the game.

The history of pokies

And so we come to Australia and its pokie-loving industry. After Charles Fey made a worldwide hit with his Liberty Bell, the game quickly spread to other parts of the world, including Austalia.

The early 1900s in Australia marks the emergence of Pokies. Initially, just like in the US, the game was illegal in the country. But that’s relatively okay since the whole casino industry was banned by the government – so pokies didn’t get the heaviest blow here.

As the game reached the land, it quickly became one of the most popular forms of entertainment for a lot of Aussies. And while this oppressive legislation persisted for decades, the industry still managed to create its very own pokie called the Clubman. The Australian company Aristocrat is the originator of this idea which saw its fruition in 1953.

Two years later, Clubman changed its name to Clubmaster, and a year after that, its popularity was skyrocketing to the point where the state of New South Wales completely legalized pokies on their territory.

After this success in the regulatory framework, pokies received a massive impetus in all directions, becoming an even greater success in Australia. And as the new era of online casino gaming hit the world, the country was prepared. From the early 2000s, the online pokies emerged in Australia. The first game called Thunderstruck was released by Microgaming in 2004.

Where the name “pokies” comes from

So, that’s how the century-long era of pokie gaming came to existence in Australia. But there’s one more thing that we didn’t cover: while we’re using pokies willy-nilly, we didn’t mention where this name came from.

While there’s no actual record of when Aussies started using this word or for what reason, there are some speculations about it. As the legend implies, almost every pub, casino, or bar had both slot machines and video poker machines side by side. And when people played one of two, they had in mind that slots and poker were always together.

So, when they wanted to mention either slots or poker machines, they were saying pokies to refer to both of them. And so was the name pokie attached to a game that has nothing to do with poker.

In conclusion, the pokies have one of the richest histories in Australia. That’s why they’re so deeply embedded in the psyche of almost every Aussie. It doesn’t matter whether they’re playing the game online or in a brick-and-mortar casino house, they always feel satisfaction and fulfillment, although sometimes this habit turns into problem gambling which is certainly a problem not just in Australia but everywhere in the world.