By BLAKE METCALF-HOLT
LATROBE Valley is topping even more unwanted categories.
Last August, Latrobe City lost $4.8 million on gambling machines, making it by far the highest of any Gippsland local government area (LGA) during that period.
That was the biggest monthly player loss since August, 2024 and places Latrobe City fourth highest of any country LGA in the state.
In total, Gippsland tallied a total loss of $14,889,557 during August, seeing players lose on average $496,318 per day, with Latrobe City residents specifically $160,005 out of pocket per day.
The next highest was East Gippsland, with a player loss of $2.9 million, followed by Wellington ($2.5 million), Baw Baw ($2.1 million), Bass Coast ($1.8 million), and South Gippsland ($723,745).
There’s no real surprise that Latrobe City is that much more, with it housing 13 gambling venues and 522 electronic gaming machines, making it the fourth most of any country LGA in Victoria in terms of the amount of machines.
Latrobe City has consistently ranked in the top half for net expenditure (player loss) in the state, especially over the last two financial years, and has been the fourth highest country LGA for player loss in the state both times.
In the 2024/25 financial year, Latrobe City cumulated a total player loss of $50,142,644 – almost $13 million more than the next Gippsland LGA.
Gippslanders in total lost $159 million over the course of that period.
In the same financial year, Victorians as a whole lost more than $7.3 billion, with taxes and levies paid to the state government totalling more than $2.4 billion.
In 1995, the Express reported that the number of gaming machines per 1000 people in the Latrobe Valley was almost double that of the entirety of Victoria, much is the same currently.
Latrobe City has 6.6 machines per 1000 people (using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Estimated Resident Population), while Victoria as a whole would sit at around 3.7 per 1000 people.
