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Woolworths/Safeway Australia's largest Poker machine Winners?

Something that you may not be aware of:

Woolworths appears to be Australia’s biggest pokie winner. We all know Woolworths is all about cornering much of the Australian market in food, petrol and grog. Seems they also do very well from gambling.
According to pokiewatch.org ‘The largest Australian operator of poker machines is Woolworths Limited / Safeway and its associated companies’.

Crikey.com.au reports that ‘the 20 most lucrative Victorian pokies venues ripped $926 million out of pokies players in the three years to 30 June, 2008, and Woolworths snaffled a staggering $736 million or 79.5%’.

Crikey suggests our major newspapers’ reliance on this corporate giant’s advertising has something to do with few people knowing  what Woolworths would rather be kept quiet.

Guess we won’t see any ‘Woolworths – the Pokie People’ logos on any of their thousands of pokies in the pubs and clubs they own under the ALH* banner across Australia.
Seems Woolworths have more than enough money to put a few thousand dollars out to local kids’ groups after extracting multi-millions from mums and dads.

 * ALH stands for "The Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group. Their webite boasts the Woolworths Limited Logo.
website http://www.alhgroup.com.au/

Garry Scott