Best new australian online pokies 2026: the prohibition that shapes the whole shortlist

The straightforward answer to the topic sits at the top of the page for a reason. There is no Australian-licensed online pokie, and there cannot be one. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, as tightened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino games — and online pokies are casino games — to a person physically in Australia. No state or territory issues a licence for it. Every brand a reader might be weighing up against the others on a shortlist of “new online pokies for Australians” is, by definition, operating outside that regime. So the page is not built as a ranking of comparable offers. It is built around consequence: what the prohibition costs the player who crosses it, what the ACMA has actually done about it, and where the money Australians actually spend on pokies really goes.

Current as of 5 November 2026, cross-checked against the ACMA’s published formal-warning register and its blocking-round notices.

Responsible gambling: what is reachable from Australia, and what an offshore site is not connected to

A reader who has typed a phrase about new online pokies is, by the act of asking, in the market the ACMA regulates. The player-protection tools the law actually puts in their hands are narrow, and the gap between them and the offshore shortlist is the page’s first piece of consequence.

BetStop — the National Self-Exclusion Register — went live in August 2023. It is the strongest self-exclusion tool any Australian has against licensed gambling online. What it covers is the Australian-licensed wagering and phone-betting services. What it does not cover is any of the brands a reader is likely to find when they search for new pokies online: those sites sit outside the regime, take deposits through PayID and crypto rails that licensed wagering does not, and have no obligation to honour a BetStop registration. A reader who has registered with BetStop and then opens an account at one of them has not, in any practical sense, excluded themselves from it.

The National Gambling Helpline is 1800 858 858, free and 24/7. Gambling Help Online runs the chat service. Both are funded for Australians and both pick up regardless of whether the gambling is on a licensed platform or an offshore one — that is one of the few lines that does not change depending on which side of the prohibition a player is on. State-based counselling and financial counselling through the National Debt Helpline complete the picture, but they are recovery tools, not exclusion tools.

What the offshore shortlist cannot offer, even in the ordinary consumer-protection sense: a complaints body with teeth, a regulator who can compel a payout, and a guarantee that a balance in the account is reachable when the player asks for it. The offshore operator’s own terms page is the entire contract. The Australian-licensed wagering system, narrow as its product set is, has all three — and that gap is what the next shelf measures.

Payments and payout speed: the rail is the tell

The deposit rail a site accepts is, for an Australian reader, the clearest single signal of which side of the prohibition the site is operating on. The legal routes for licensed wagering have been narrowed to a defined set, and every other rail tells the reader what they are looking at.

Since 11 June 2024, credit cards, credit-related products and digital currency are banned as payment for any Australian-licensed online wagering service. The penalty for an operator who takes one anyway runs to A$247,500. The legal deposit methods for a licensed Australian bookmaker are debit card, bank transfer, PayID/Osko and BPAY. PayID is the rail these search queries lean on — the same acronym that shows up in “new PayID pokies Australia real money” — and a reader who follows that thread straight ends up at licensed wagering, not at online pokies.

The offshore sites in the ACMA record accept a different set: credit cards through offshore processors, a wallet layer (Neteller, Skrill, MiFinity, eZeeWallet are the common ones in this category), several cryptocurrencies, and in some cases PayID through an intermediary that is not itself an Australian-licensed wagering provider. Each of those routes tells the reader two things. The first is that the site is operating outside the Australian licensed-wagering perimeter, where the credit-card ban does not apply to it. The second is that the site’s claim to take PayID does not put it on the same regulatory footing as Sportsbet or Bet365 — those names are licensed by the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which regulates 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers from a Darwin office that meets once a month.

Payout speed on the licensed side is set by the rails: PayID and Osko settle in near-real-time during AEST banking hours; BPAY is overnight; debit card refunds run one to three business days. Payout speed on the offshore side is whatever the operator’s own cashier says it is, modified by whatever extra checks the operator decides to run on the Australian customer. That asymmetry — Australian rails are governed, offshore rails are not — is the structural reason the speed story for an Australian reader ends with “use the licensed rail.”

A reader who types “new online pokies no deposit bonus” or “new online pokies Australia no deposit bonus” is, by the time they reach a deposit screen, looking at one of those offshore rails. The no-deposit shape of the bonus does not change which side of the prohibition the site sits on, and the rail is the better tell.

Specific games: what a “new pokie” actually denotes, and why the online half of that word is the part that runs into the prohibition

A pokie, in Australian English, is an electronic gaming machine. The name comes from the original poker-style machines and stuck. Pokies sit in clubs, pubs and casinos in every state and territory except Western Australia’s general hospitality venues, and each jurisdiction sets its own minimum return-to-player and its own design rules. New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Queensland all sit at a minimum RTP of 85 percent; Victoria is 85 percent generally and 87 percent at Crown Melbourne; the ACT and Tasmania are 87 percent; South Australia is 87.5 percent; Western Australia is 90 percent.

A “new pokie release” is, in the licensed Australian market, a game that has passed the regulator’s approval process for the jurisdiction it will be deployed in and has gone live on a club, pub or casino floor. The regulator’s testing covers the math model, the advertised RTP against a tolerance band, the maximum stake, and the responsible-gaming features that jurisdiction requires. What sits on a licensed floor in Crown Melbourne in March has had its ruleset compared against the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission’s requirements, and what sits on a licensed floor in NSW has had the same treatment from Liquor & Gaming NSW. The two are not the same game on the same rules, because the jurisdictional floor differs.

The shape of a “new pokie” on an offshore site is different. The offshore game catalogue is a software product. The maths model and the RTP number were set by the provider; the regulator who checked them, if any, is a Curaçao or Anjouan gaming control board, not an Australian one. The game has not been checked against the minimum RTP any Australian jurisdiction enforces, and the maximum stake and the responsible-gaming features the player sees are whatever the provider has built. None of this is hidden — the offshore site’s terms page will state it — but a reader comparing “new pokies” on an offshore shortlist with “new pokies” on a Crown Melbourne floor is comparing two different products on two different regulatory foundations.

The wider catalogue question — what games a new pokie sits among — runs into the same prohibition. The online version of every other table game a reader will meet on a shortlist is governed by the same section of the Interactive Gambling Act. Baccarat, which research traces through 19th-century France and through punto banco’s Havana development in the 1940s and which sits on Crown Melbourne’s floor as Traditional Baccarat, Crown Baccarat and 2 to 1 Baccarat under Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission approval, is prohibited online for Australians. Blackjack, with its 0.28 percent house edge under liberal Las Vegas Strip rules and its 0.43 percent under Atlantic City rules, is prohibited online for Australians. The Australian-licensed product set a reader can actually reach is wagering, lotteries, keno and land-based table games — and the same prohibition shapes all of it.

What that leaves the reader who wants a new pokie experience. A land-based club or pub in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, the ACT or the Northern Territory. Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth for the table games. A licensed Australian wagering account for the racing and sport product, with no pokies in it. Those are the lawful routes, and the next shelf is the one that makes them visible.

The shortlist: eleven brands the ACMA has warned, and the lawful alternative each one displaces

The list that follows is not a ranking. It is the ACMA’s own record, transposed into the order the regulator published its warnings, with the operator name and the date the formal warning was issued. No brand is recommended; no bonus, promo or voucher code is published; the only thing being compared is the regulator’s view of each one and what an Australian reader is supposed to do with that.

The lawful alternative each brand displaces is the same for all of them: an Australian-licensed venue, a state-regulated pub or club, or Crown Melbourne or Crown Perth. NSW alone had 87,298 gaming machines outside casinos across 2,195 venues in June 2023, with player losses of A$8.18 billion in 2022-23. Queensland had 21,122 gaming machines in 351 venues in October 2023. Victoria had 26,380 gaming machines outside Crown Casino in 488 venues in 2021-22, under a 30,000-machine statewide limit. Western Australia banned poker machines in pubs and clubs when Crown Perth opened in 1985; Crown Perth’s own count has since grown from about 200 machines in 1985 to roughly 2,500. Registered clubs have run legal poker machines in New South Wales since 1956. The lawful pokies landscape is not thin — it is bigger than the offshore one.

The ACMA’s enforcement record at a glance

The “Subject support” column follows the way the regulator’s view and the operator listings describe the brand. A dash means research found no separate listings entry to attach to the brand beyond the warning itself; “listings-only” means research found the brand referenced in a third-party directory, which is recorded here as that directory reports it rather than as the operator’s own statement.

RocketPlay — the most recent ACMA action and what it displaced

RocketPlay is the brand the ACMA moved against most recently: a formal warning to Pulsup Ltd in March 2026 over Rocketplay.com.au. The same operator family had already been warned in May 2022, when Dama N.V. was the named recipient across six brands including Rocketplay. The 2022 warning was the ACMA’s first against this operator; the 2026 warning is the second. A reader who treated the 2022 warning as a one-off event that the operator had since moved past has, on the regulator’s own record, been treating the matter wrongly. The lawful alternative is the same set: a NSW club or pub with 87,298 machines to choose from, a Queensland club or pub with 21,122, a Victorian venue under the 30,000-machine cap, or Crown Melbourne. The displaced experience is the online one, and the regulator’s view is that the online one should not have been offered to the reader in the first place.

Level Up Casino — the warning that started a longer record

Level Up Casino sits at the head of the ACMA record for this set. The May 2022 warning to Dama N.V. covered Level Up alongside five other brands. The integration directory the BGaming provider publishes lists Level Up among the operators carrying its content; the ACMA’s action is independent of that listing, and the listing does not put the operator on the Australian side of the prohibition. The lawful alternative is the same set as for every other brand on the list.

Woo Casino — the first Dama N.V. escalation since 2022

The ACMA’s March 2025 formal warning to Dama N.V. over Woo Casino was the regulator’s first move against Dama N.V. since the 2022 batch. That timing matters: the operator’s continued operation of Woo Casino in the years between the two warnings is the ACMA’s basis for the second action, not a separate dispute. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Spirit Casino — the second Dama N.V. escalation in 2025

The May 2025 warning over Spirit Casino followed the Woo Casino warning by two months. Two formal warnings in three months against the same operator, against the same regime, is the ACMA’s way of signalling that the operator has not restructured out of the prohibited offering. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

National Casino — the Consolutetish escalation

The July 2025 formal warning to Consolutetish S.R.L. over National Casino was paired with a warning over Bizzo Casino. A third-party directory entry on the Wikipedia article on gambling in Australia references National Casino among the offshore brands that operate against Australians; the ACMA’s action is independent of that directory, and the directory does not place the operator on the lawful side. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Bizzo Casino — a second warning after a four-year gap

Bizzo Casino had already been the subject of a 2022 formal warning to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V. The July 2025 warning to Consolutetish S.R.L. is the ACMA’s second against the brand, against a different operating company. A brand that has been warned twice in three years for the same conduct, by two different corporate vehicles, is a brand the regulator treats as a continuing target. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Ignition Casino — the Bamboo Media warning

The July 2025 warning to Bamboo Media over Ignition Casino paired with the warnings over National Casino and Bizzo Casino. Three formal warnings in the same month, against three different brands, signal the ACMA’s enforcement tempo for that quarter. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Instant Casino — the earliest 2025 warning in this set

The February 2025 formal warning to EOD Code SRL over Instant Casino is the earliest warning in the 2025 batch. It is also one of the shorter gaps between brand launch and regulator action that research records here. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Jackbit — a 2026 warning that mirrors the RocketPlay timing

The April 2026 formal warning to Ryker B.V. over Jackbit landed in the same enforcement quarter as the March 2026 warning over RocketPlay. Two operator families, two formal warnings, two months apart — the regulator’s enforcement tempo for 2026 is, on the research record, slightly faster than its 2025 tempo. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Casino Intense — the Sterplay warning, with cross-references

The April 2025 formal warning to Sterplay Holding Ltd over Casino Intense is the brand for which research carries the most cross-references: Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporting on the broader enforcement picture, the ACMA register itself, and Crown Melbourne’s own game-floor disclosures all reference Casino Intense in the materials research drew on. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

Sky Crown — the 2022 Hollycorn warning, still in force

The September 2022 formal warning to Hollycorn N.V. over Sky Crown and Blue Leo is the earliest warning in the ACMA record that research carries. A formal warning remains on the regulator’s register until it is varied or withdrawn; research found no variation. The lawful alternative is unchanged.

What the comparison actually says

The block is not built so a reader can pick a winner. It is built so a reader can see, in the regulator’s own record, that the shortlist is not a market of comparable offers but a market of brands that have each been told, in the regulator’s formal language, to stop. A reader who has typed “best new australian online pokies” expecting a ranked list will leave this block with a different ranking — the one the ACMA has actually built, ordered by date of action, and on top of it the lawful alternatives the prohibition points them to.

The fundamentals: what an Australian reader is actually comparing

A new pokie on a licensed Australian floor is a regulated product. The minimum RTP, the maximum stake, the responsible-gaming features, and the venue-level controls are all set by a state or territory regulator who has the power to vary them. A new pokie on an offshore site is a software product whose settings are set by the operator’s own commercial judgement. Those two products have similar words attached to them — RTP, volatility, paytable, bonus features — and the words mean different things on each side of the prohibition.

Australia runs about 3 percent of the world’s pub and club poker machines with 0.3 percent of the global population. In 2020-21, Australians bet almost A$150 billion through gaming machines and lost A$12.18 billion on them. Independent industry estimates suggest that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels fell from 74 percent in 2021 to 64 percent. That gap is the essential takeaway: it is the share of the gambling dollar the prohibition is letting through, and the share it is not. The lawful channels have absorbed most of it; the illegal ones have absorbed enough that the regulator has, since 2017, chased more than 230 unlicensed gambling services out of the market and blocked 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites since the first blocking request in November 2019.

The blocking arithmetic

The arithmetic of the ACMA’s blocking programme is what the prohibition turns into, measured in months and in site names. Between November 2019 and June 2026, the regulator moved from the first blocking request to a running total of 1,751 blocked websites. That is the period over which the regulator has built the record the table above is drawn from, and the rate at which the total has grown is the rate at which new sites replace the ones that are blocked. The June 2026 blocking round alone added 12 more: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz.com, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino. Read against the 81 months in the period, the running total sits in a band of roughly 20 to 25 blocks per month as a steady-state figure, with the early months of the programme running lower and the 2024-2026 quarters running higher as the ACMA’s enforcement tempo has stepped up. The exact per-month figure shifts as the regulator reports new rounds, and the band is the honest summary: enough to say the ACMA is keeping pace with the volume of new entrants, not enough to say the volume is shrinking.

A reader who lands on this page and recognises one of the 12 brands from the June 2026 round as a brand they were about to deposit with is the reader the blocking round was designed for. A reader who lands here and recognises none of them is the reader the lawful alternative is designed for.

Legality: what the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 actually says, and what it does to the comparison

The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, as amended by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, is the statute the ACMA enforces. Section 15 of the Act makes it an offence to provide a prohibited interactive gambling service to a person in Australia. Online casino games and online pokies are prohibited interactive gambling services. In-play betting on sport is also prohibited under the same section. What is licensable is wagering on races and sport placed before the event, lotteries, and keno.

The 2017 amendments added civil penalty provisions, expanded the regulator’s investigatory powers and brought affiliate marketing within the regime. Before the 2017 amendments, the regulator had fewer tools; more than 230 unlicensed gambling services have left the Australian market since the 2017 strengthening, and the blocking regime that has built the 1,751-site total was set up after the amendments were in force.

The Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission is the regulator for most of Australia’s online wagering market — 52 of the country’s online bookmakers, including Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes, are licensed in the Territory. The Commission’s structure is small: no full-time staff, monthly meetings in Darwin, and a 2026 bill was introduced to reform the body’s de facto position. The licensing arrangement is, in the main, a tax-base arrangement as much as a consumer-protection one. A reader looking at an offshore brand’s “Curacao licence” or “Anjouan licence” and comparing it to a Bet365 or Sportsbet Australian licence is comparing two things that do not have the same regulatory foundation, and the comparison does not flatter the offshore one.

What the 2026 reform changes

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 19 August 2026. Its advertising and inducement measures commence on 1 January 2027. The bill is law with a start date — it has been passed, but the operative provisions are not yet in force on a 2026 page. A reader who reads the bill’s text and treats the advertising and inducement measures as live now has, on the research record, read ahead of the commencement. A reader who reads the bill’s text and waits for the 2027 commencement has read it correctly.

What a credit-card or crypto deposit signals

A licensed Australian wagering operator cannot, since 11 June 2024, accept a credit card, a credit-related product or digital currency as payment. The penalty is up to A$247,500 per operator per breach. An offshore site is not within that perimeter, and an offshore site will accept all three. The rail a site asks for is, in this respect, the most reliable single piece of evidence a reader has about which side of the prohibition the site sits on — more reliable than the licence the site displays, which is a Curaçao or Anjouan instrument the regulator does not recognise as a substitute for an Australian one.

What a tax position actually looks like

Gambling winnings of a recreational player are not assessable income in Australia, under section 6-5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. Losses are not deductible. The position changes only if the person carries on a business of gambling, which is the ATO’s test, not the reader’s. A reader who treats a big pokie win as something they need to declare has, on the research record, read the rule wrong; a reader who treats a big pokie loss as something they can claim has, on the research record, also read it wrong. The rule is symmetrical: recreational play sits outside the income tax base on both sides.

What player age means in this market

The minimum age for any form of Australian-licensed gambling is 18. The minimum age on an offshore site is whatever the offshore site sets, which is often 18 but not always enforced by the same rigour a licensed Australian operator applies. A reader who is under 18 and reading this page is reading it past their own eligibility, and the lawful routes — land-based pokies, Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth, licensed wagering — are all closed to them on age grounds anyway.

The cost of crossing the prohibition: what the offshore shortlist is, in plain terms

An Australian reader who deposits with one of the brands in the ACMA record is doing four things at once. They are depositing with a brand the regulator has formally warned. They are depositing through a rail the regulator has narrowed for licensed wagering and which the offshore site accepts because the site is outside the licensed perimeter. They are gambling on a product the regulator has classified as prohibited. And they are accepting that any consumer-protection complaint they have runs through the offshore site’s own terms page, not through an Australian regulator.

The cost of each of those choices is not hypothetical. The ACMA’s June 2026 blocking round added 12 sites to the blocked list; a reader with a balance on one of those 12 sites when the round lands is, on the regulator’s record, in the position of having a balance at an Australian ISP-blocked domain. The 1,751 total covers every brand research could name plus the long tail of affiliate marketing sites that pointed readers to them; the rate at which the total has grown is the rate at which new entrants have replaced the old ones. The H2 estimate of A$3.9 billion a year in losses to illegal sites is the share of the gambling dollar the prohibition has not yet pushed into a lawful channel, and the share the regulator is, with each blocking round, trying to push back across the line.

The lawful alternative each warning displaces is not a downgrade. NSW’s 87,298 machines in 2,195 venues outside casinos, with their A$8.18 billion in 2022-23 losses, are the largest regulated pokie market in the country. Queensland’s 21,122 machines across 351 venues, Victoria’s 26,380 across 488 venues under the 30,000-machine cap, and the other jurisdictions’ smaller but regulated floors, are the alternative the prohibition is designed to point readers towards. Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth run the table-game side of the same product. The Federal Group’s monopoly over Tasmania’s poker machines ended in November 2021, and the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission took over oversight; Tasmania’s mandatory pre-commitment card reform, planned as a national first, was delayed to late 2025 and is part of the broader tightening the licensed side is going through. None of this is hypothetical: it is the regulator’s own job, with the regulator’s own timeline, on the regulator’s own record.

What this page does and does not do

This page is not a recommendation. It does not rank the eleven brands above in any order other than the ACMA’s. It does not publish any bonus, promo or voucher code, because the only sources for such codes were affiliate marketing pages, and the affiliate marketing pages are themselves the subject of ACMA action. It does not advise a reader to deposit with any brand in the table. It does not compare bonus sizes, wagering requirements, or payout times between the brands, because the comparison the reader is actually making is the comparison between the offshore shortlist and the lawful alternative, and the lawful alternative has only one product shape — a regulated pokie in a regulated venue — that the comparison reduces to.

What it does do is set out, plainly, the prohibition that shapes the whole shortlist, the regulator’s enforcement record against eleven named brands, the rail a reader uses to tell which side of the prohibition a site sits on, and the lawful alternatives the prohibition points a reader towards. The page’s central theme is the blocking arithmetic, the jurisdictional minimum-RTP table the next shelf turns into a comparison, and the gap between the estimated A$3.9 billion annual illegal-spend and the lawful channels’ share.

The reader’s working set: a short reference

• The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits offering online casino games, online pokies and in-play betting to a person in Australia. No state or territory issues a licence for any of them.
• The ACMA has issued formal warnings to the eleven brands named above. The dates of those warnings are the dates of the regulator’s actions, not the dates of any consumer complaint.
• The ACMA’s blocking programme has, between November 2019 and June 2026, blocked 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites. The June 2026 round alone added 12.
• Since 2017, more than 230 unlicensed gambling services have left the Australian market.
• BetStop covers Australian-licensed wagering and phone betting. Offshore sites are not connected to it.
• The National Gambling Helpline is 1800 858 858, free and 24/7. Gambling Help Online runs the chat service.
• The lawful alternatives are state-regulated pubs and clubs, Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth, and licensed Australian wagering for the racing and sport product.

Frequently asked questions about new australian online pokies

How much do Australians lose on gaming machines in an average year?

In 2020-21 the figure was A$12.18 billion on gaming machines alone, against almost A$150 billion turned over. New South Wales accounted for A$8.18 billion of the losses in 2022-23. The H2 Gambling Capital 2025 estimate puts losses to illegal online sites at about A$3.9 billion a year, and shows the share of gambling going through legal channels falling from 74 percent in 2021 to 64 percent.

What counts as a new pokie release versus an established one?

A new pokie on a licensed Australian floor is a game that has passed the relevant state or territory regulator’s approval process for the jurisdiction it is being deployed in, and that regulator’s testing covers the math model, the RTP, the maximum stake and the responsible-gaming features that jurisdiction requires. A new pokie on an offshore site is a software product whose settings are set by the operator, and the regulator who has checked it is not an Australian one.

Is it legal for an online casino to offer new pokie titles to Australians?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, as tightened by the 2017 amendments, prohibits offering online casino games, including online pokies, to a person in Australia. The ACMA enforces the prohibition through formal warnings and through blocking requests to Australian internet service providers. The individual player is not prosecuted; the IGA targets the provider.

Can a new pokie bonus be claimed through a PayID deposit?

PayID and Osko are legal deposit routes for Australian-licensed wagering, but online pokies are not an Australian-licensed product. An offshore site that accepts PayID through an intermediary is accepting a rail the licensed wagering side uses, while offering a product the licensed wagering side does not offer. The bonus may be claimable through that rail on the offshore site’s own terms; the rail is not a regulatory clearance.

Are new pokie titles tested before they appear on licensed club or pub floors?

Yes, and the testing is regulator-specific. NSW Liquor & Gaming, the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission, the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission and the other state and territory regulators each test games against their own jurisdiction’s minimum RTP, maximum stake and design requirements. A new pokie approved in Victoria is not automatically approved in NSW.

Why does Australia have such a large share of the world’s poker machines?

Australia runs about 3 percent of the world’s pub and club poker machines with 0.3 percent of the global population. The short historical answer is that registered clubs have run legal poker machines in New South Wales since 1956, that the machines became a major club and pub revenue source through the 1990s, and that no federal-level cap has ever been set on the number of machines each jurisdiction can license. Western Australia is the exception that proves the rule: poker machines were banned in pubs and clubs when Crown Perth opened in 1985, and Crown Perth’s own count has since grown from about 200 machines to roughly 2,500.