Pubs in Australia are going pokies-free. For these Sydney venues, it was the secret to success

Exclusive: Deep inside a 156-year-old pub on a popular Sydney street, the beer-stained carpets of the back room no longer sag under the weight of pokies machines.

The Duke of Enmore in the city’s Inner-West has ripped out the slots from its gaming room, making room for pool tables, retro arcade games and seating in a deliberate rejection of NSW’s pokies culture.

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Do you have a story? Contact reporter April Glover at april.glover@nine.com.au

The famous music venue has transformed a large part of its pub from a neon dungeon to a bustling entertainment room.

A poker machine graveyard also sits inside the historic Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo, owned by the same parent company Odd Culture Group.

While they may be rare, these Sydney pubs represent a new generation of anti-pokies pubs, hotels and RSLs rising across Australia.

Odd Culture chief executive and co-founder James Thorpe knew it was a risk to tear out 26 slot machines and forgo the rivers of gold that flow from “predatory” gaming rooms.

“In NSW, we’re obsessed with pokies. There is this weird facet to our pubs in Sydney, which is the gaming room, which is usually occupying the room that used to be for live music,” Thorpe told nine.com.au.

“So much money is made from these rooms, half of the value of the property of some of these pubs is tied up just in the gaming machine licences.

“It distorts the market in a really real way, and makes it really difficult to have a pub that doesn’t have pokies.”

When Odd Culture took over the Duke of Enmore in 20202 and the Old Fitzroy Hotel in 2021, Thorpe felt an ethical responsibility to remove the pokies machines.

He said it was “unconscionable” to profiteer off NSW’s growing gambling crisis, particularly at the Old Fitzroy Hotel, which is located nearby large social and public housing precincts.

A record $2.45 billion was lost to poker machines in the third quarter of 2025 in NSW, according to figures released by Wesley Mission.

And the state is on track to lose over $10 billion to poker machines in 2026.

“Those machines have been meticulously crafted to play and prey on people who have problems with addiction and gambling,” Thorpe said.

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“It is a small number of people who pay for the room, essentially.

“It’s not a group of the boys out having a slap one thousand times that pays for the room... if you go into an RSL, it’s the pension day Grandma going in there and rinsing her whole bank account.”

Pokies-free pub thrives in regional town

When winemaker Peter Logan saw that the old Court House Hotel in Mudgee was up for sale in 2025, one of the features that sealed the deal was its distinct lack of pokies machines.

Logan was hoping to crack into the pub market but had no interest in operating a venue that depended on its gaming room to stay profitable.

“They just do too much damage.... I wouldn’t like to be making money from that,” Logan said.

“It was a draw card for us, and it was a negative for any experienced publicans, by the looks of things.”

The previous owners of the iconic NSW Central West pub, originally built in 1958, removed the slot machines before putting it on the market.

Logan and his mates, who joined him to make a winning bid on the Court House Hotel, then repurposed the room into a cosy sitting area with leather armchairs, board games and card games.

“We wanted a place where people talk to each other and enjoy themselves... we’ve got a nice big leafy beer garden, a front terrace and then two working fireplaces in winter, there’s a lot of soul and spirit to it the place,” Logan said.

“That’s why the pub was invented really, and that’s what it was for so long.

“Pokies only came into pubs in my adult lifetime, before that, they didn’t exist, and they really changed the scene of pubs.”

‘Stopping the creation of addiction’

Mum-of-six and anti-gambling advocate Kate Seselja once sunk into a deep pokies addiction, losing around $500,000 over 15 years to slot machines.

She said exposure to pokies machines at pubs can be a gateway to crippling addiction.

“It helps exponentially and what these pubs and clubs are doing by removing these products is stopping the creation of addiction,” Seselja told nine.com.au.

“It is putting the wellbeing of their community first, and not exposing them to a product that is intentionally designed to addict.”

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Seselja welcomed the rise of pokies-free pubs but decried the fact this shift in sentiment relies on publicans making a tough choice.

As part of her anti-gambling advocacy, Seselja has called for loss limits to be enforced on poker machines and for individual losses to be capped at $100 per day, $500 per month and $5000 per year.

She said it was “unfathomable” that the state and federal governments have done little to curb the damage caused by pokies addiction.

“In the absence of any meaningful reforms regarding safe consumer safeguarding of poker machines, this has been the only alternative for venues that actually prioritise the wellbeing of their communities,” Seselja added.

“When the community wellbeing is put ahead of profit, the community shows up in a way that rewards that action, and it doesn’t necessarily mean financial disadvantage.”

Thorpe said it shouldn’t be a radical proposition to be pokies-free.

Nor should it come as a financial risk to the pubs that take a stand.

Odd Culture’s strategy, so far though, has worked.

Live music made a sensational comeback at the Duke of Enmore and the Old Fitzroy Hotel’s 65-seat theatre, one of the remaining in-house pub cinemas in the country, attracts indie movie fans from around the city.

“Both of those businesses are way more popular and successful now than they were before we took them on,” Thorpe said.

“The community was really, really receptive to it.

“We’ve crafted really successful business models there that kind of show that you can still run a traditional pub in Sydney, without pokies.”