Australians are spending less on gambling compared to previous years. A report by Roy Morgan released on Tuesday said that Aussies spent $18.5 billion on all forms of gambling in the past 12 months to September 2011. It is down from the $20.2 billion they spend for 2002.

For the same period, they spent $11.2 billion dollars on poker machines, which was less than the $13.1 billion they spent for the same period a year earlier and the $11.7 billion at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.

However, spending on lotteries and scratch tickets was steady at $2.1 billion from $2 billion in 2002.

"The decline in gambling spend can mainly be attributed to a decline in spend on poker machines - playing the pokies is becoming less popular and less Australians are patronizing venues like licenses clubs," Roy Morgan Research International Director of Tourism, Travel & Leisure Jane Ianniello said in a statement.

"The growth of online gambling, especially sports betting, has not been big enough to counter this large decline in poker machine expenditure," she added.

The study confirmed a similar paper released by Gambling Research Australia which found that young Aussies who admitted participating in a gambling activity at least once within the past 12 months preferred to buy instant-prize tickets and scratch cards, followed by lottery tickets and playing of card games at home or in the residences of friends or relatives.

For that period, 23 per cent of the young Aussies did not gamble at all, while of the remaining 77 per cent who did, 56 per cent were considered social gamblers, 16 per cent were classified as at-risk and 5 per cent were deemed problem gamblers.

Those who belong to the problem gamblers group were mostly makes and are indigenous people.