Pokies power couple splurges $25m on Melbourne pub
Deborah Mathieson-Tomsic and her husband Dave Tomsic – the daughter and son-in-law of billionaire pub baron Bruce Mathieson – have expanded their Black Rhino gaming pub empire, acquiring the Cardinia Park Hotel in Melbourne’s outer south-eastern suburbs for $25.4 million – the latest in a string of notable deals in the booming sector.
The large-format bistro hotel in Beaconsfield, acquired from the Deegan family, came with 45 gaming machines on a near 5-hectare site. The acquisition increases the couple’s pokies ownership to about 1200 machines across 25 venues, including the Grand Hotel in Mornington and Richmond Social in inner Melbourne.
Mr Tomsic said well-run pubs on large landholdings like the Cardinia Park Hotel were irreplaceable assets that were “very hard to come by”.
“A valuer may say it’s not worth as much as what we paid, but you can’t just go out and buy another one. I reckon it’s cheap,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
He also defended Black Rhino’s ownership of poker machines saying the focus should be on online gambling which was “out of control”.
“At least with our venues, you have to actually get out to gamble, and Victoria has one of the most restricted gaming industries in the country,” Mr Tomsic said.
“[The gambling reform lobby] is beating up on the wrong thing,”
Will Connolly from JLL, who brokered the sale of Cardinia Park, said the hotel’s large footprint “within one of metropolitan Melbourne’s most rapidly expanding locations” was a key attraction for the purchaser, as well as the multiple revenue drivers.
Gaming pubs on large landholdings on the outskirts of Sydney are also attracting significant capital, the latest being the Tahmoor Inn Hotel & Motel in the Macarthur region, which was bought by a Sydney-based hotel syndicate for almost $40 million.
Standing on a 2.9ha site, the sprawling tavern features a bar, bistro, gaming room with 24 entitlements, function room and a 14-room motel. It was sold after 36 years of ownership by the related Murray and Ryan families.
The sale follows a number of multi-generational hotel divestments, including the Stanford family tavern portfolio which was held for more than 40 years and the Strathfield Hotel, sold after more than 100 years by the Whelan family.
HTL Property’s Blake Edwards and Dan Dragicevich brokered the sale of the Tahmoor Inn. The same agency also brokered both the Stanford and Whelan family hotel divestments.
“Having weathered the virtual storm of global economic and pandemic-related challenges, long-term hotel owners are using the comparative clear air to take important strategic decisions around future tenure,” said HTL managing director Andrew Jolliffe.
“As such, we are finding ourselves regularly tapped by generational family ownership vehicles seeking an elegant and prosperous key asset divestment,” he said.
Mr Jolliffe said in many cases the buyers of these assets were themselves “experienced private hotel vehicles”. Although he declined to identify the syndicate buying the Tahmoor Inn, he said it involved “old money”.
The divestment of long-held assets is also happening in the inner suburbs of Sydney.
On Newtown’s King Street retail strip, cocktail bar Kuleto’s, owned for more than 40 years by Donna Asensio, has been sold to an investment consortium for about $8 million.
Sam Handy and Blake Edwards from HTL brokered the deal.
Mr Handy said the incoming owners planned to introduce an “edgier food and beverage offering” that would better resonate with the local community.
