The Herald Sun’s Mick Warner had a curious double-page spread in the sports section today revealing pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson has shafted the Western Bulldogs and Richmond by shifting lucrative pokies joint ventures across to Carlton. I’ve submitted the following letter for publication in the AFL-obsessed Murdoch tabloid tomorrow:

As a Tigers supporter, I am outraged that Woolworths has shafted the club by shifting the estimated $300,000 of annual revenue from the pokies joint venture at the Royal Oak Hotel in Richmond to benefit Carlton Football Club where billionaire Bruce Mathieson is a former director and prominent supporter.

Isn’t Woolworths, which owns 70% of the giant 12,000-strong pokies joint venture with Mathieson, meant to be a key backer of the Tigers through its prominent sponsorship of the club through its Dick Smith division?

Presumably Julia Gillard is also upset with Woolies and Mathieson because the Western Bulldogs have been shafted in a similar way at another pokies venue which is moving to Carlton.

The Herald Sun also quoted Mathieson, a colourful former business partner of Alan Bond, saying he now spends 80% of his time in Queensland. This seems odd given Woolworths has effectively out-sourced management of its most controversial division to the Melbourne-based Australian Liquor and Hospitality division which is meant to be directly operated by Mathieson as someone who former Woolworths CEO Roger Corbett lauded as the nation’s top hotelier.

This raises the question of how a semi-retired minority shareholder in a joint venture with the nation’s biggest retailer can direct financial gifts to his favourite football club? Surely that Dick Smith sponsorship of Richmond should have been taken into consideration by the broader Woolworths management team? There is no more emotive issue in Melbourne than AFL and what risk management assessment did Woolworths make on the question of whether furious Tigers and Bulldogs supporters could decide to boycott the retailing giant because of perceived favouritism by a controversial Melbourne identity?

The transfer of five pokies venues to Carlton also highlights the way pokies operators in Victoria are gaming the system to tap into the lower tax rates paid by registered clubs, as The Sunday Herald Sun’s James Campbell pointed out in this comment piece in March.

The Age’s AFL guru Caroline Wilson first reported the furious reaction of Bulldogs CEO Campbell Rose in May when it became apparent Mathieson intended to use the $1 billion auction of future pokies entitlements to transform his beloved Blues into one of the 10 largest pokies operators in Victoria.

Whilst the legislation limits Woolworths to 35% of Victoria’s hotel pokies, the rules are vague when it comes to secretive management agreements involving clubs.

For instance, John Durie reported in The Australian today that Tabcorp has stitched up a deal to run the entire 3000 poker machines controlled by the RSL in Victoria.

Tabcorp is also reported to be backing an $80 million bid to buy the Castello chain of pokies pubs in Victoria, but only this will be counted towards the 35% legislative limit.

Tatts Group is the other duopolist which exits the Victorian pokies market in 2012 and CEO Dick McIlwain has taken a different position to rival Tabcorp, declaring the following in March: ”I am not unhappy to be getting out of the poker machine business; they are not the sort of business I want to be in long term and they’re on the nose all around the world.”

Perhaps it would be worthwhile for the various Melbourne-based AFL clubs to take a similar position.

Disclosure: Stephen Mayne is running for the Senate in Victoria on an anti-pokies platform. He is also a councillor in the City of Manningham where two of the five venues transferred to Carlton are located.