By Michael Burt
Pokie players in the mid north coast region have contributed heavily to a record surge in poker machine losses, with new government data showing $2.37 billion lost across NSW in the first three months of 2026.
The Mid Coast region came it at number seven for the highest losses in regional NSW with $24,451,101, or more than $250 per person, in Wesley Mission’s NSW Poker Machine Loss Data Analysis Q1 2026 report.
That represents an increase of 9.8 per cent compared to Q1 in 2025. The report predicts the total losses for the region in 2026 will be a staggering $106.1 million.
In regional NSW, the highest losses were recorded in the Central Coast ($90.7 million), Wollongong ($54.6 million) and Newcastle ($52.1 million).
Wesley Mission analysis projects the state is now on track to lose more than $10 billion in 2026, which it calls a “terrible milestone in NSW decades-long capture to the pokies industry.”
The Q1 2026 figures show losses rose from $2.17 billion in the same quarter last year to $2.37 billion, a 9.4 per cent increase in just 12 months – more than twice the rate of inflation for the same period.
The figures equates to an average $26.4 million every day, $185 million every week, or just over $1.1 million every hour being lost on poker machines across NSW. This is also the highest year-on-year growth in Q1 poker machine losses since COVID.
Wesley Mission CEO & Superintendent Reverend Stu Cameron said escalating losses continued to climb despite sustained cost-of-living pressures.
“In a cost-of-living crisis families across NSW are tightening their belts, often doing without essentials, while at the same time poker machine losses are rising more than two times faster than inflation,” Rev Cameron said.
“There seem to be only three certainties in NSW right now: death, taxes and spiralling poker machine losses.”
“Quarter after quarter, the same story repeats itself — more money lost, more families under pressure, and more communities carrying the burden of gambling harm. It’s a grotesque Groundhog Day on steroids.”
The latest data shows losses remain heavily concentrated in the same communities. In metropolitan Sydney, the highest-loss LGAs in Q1 2026 were Canterbury-Bankstown ($198.8 million), Fairfield ($186.1 million) and Cumberland ($136.2 million).
Rev Cameron said the concentration of losses in the same places, quarter after quarter, showed the burden was falling hardest on communities already under pressure.
“Behind these numbers is the money needed to pay rent, groceries and other essential bills being drained by pokies out of household pockets.”
Rev Cameron said the shocking data underlines the urgency for immediate and proportionate reform.
“Losses have continued to climb while harm deepens. The question has never been whether reform is needed, it desperately is, but how much longer we must wait for the Minns government to step up and do the hard and desperately needed work to reduce and prevent harm.”
Wesley Mission, alongside more than 50 reform partners, is calling for the NSW Government to implement stronger harm-reduction and prevention measures, including a mandatory cashless gambling card with robust protections built in and a statewide shutdown of poker machines between midnight and 10am.
“Nothing good happens on a poker machine at 3am.”
“The evidence is clear that harm escalates in the early hours, when people are tired, isolated and more likely to chase losses. A midnight-to-10am shutdown remains a critical and effective reform available to the NSW Government right now. Not only would it reduce harm, but it would also begin to prevent it.”