Who are the world’s biggest gamblers?

According to gambling research consultants H2 Gambling Capital, the title of the biggest per capita gambling nation in the world goes to Australia.

Their charted findings were published recently in the Economist and indicated that the average Aussie adult loses more than three times as much as the average American (US resident), Swedish or British adult.  The only country coming close to Australia in the biggest (gambling) loser stakes was Singapore which has clearly felt the impact of its two new mega-casinos Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa which together operate at a run-rate equivalent to the Vegas Strip.

The runaway win to Australia shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the gambling ethos there.

The country’s biggest horse race (The Melbourne Cup) is decreed a public holiday so that work doesn’t get in the way of placing a bet; every state has a major casino and almost every metropolitan suburb has a pokies (slots) venue giving Australia the other dubious honour of having the highest per capita concentration of slot machines in the world.

The problem gambling debate is alive and well (and often sponsored by gambling interests) and never far from the political arena, particularly since anti-gambling independent Senator Andrew Wilkie one of the reasons the Labor government managed to win a slim governing majority.  But it always has been debated, and Australians have always gambled plenty.

The saying goes that Australians will bet on 2 flies crawling up wall.  There are many, many flies in Australia.

You do the math.