What’s a Liquor Monopoly Worth? $50 Million Less Than Nothing

We have just released the most comprehensive analysis yet of the financial performance of New Zealand’s four remaining monopoly-holding licensing trusts – and the findings are stark.

We looked at a decade of financial data from the Portage, Waitākere, Invercargill, and Mataura licensing trusts, comparing them with eleven community trusts that operate without monopoly rights. Our goal: to test the assumption that monopolies generate community funding.

🧾 What We Found

• The four licensing trusts collectively held $271 million in community equity, 75% of which was invested in property.
• Their returns on equity ranged from 3.3% to 4.7% – underperforming all of the community trusts (and a range of investment asset classes).
• If operated as community trusts in competitive markets, these four trusts could have generated 60% more profit and more than doubled their charitable distributions: from $48 million to $100 million over 10 years.

In other words, communities missed out on $52 million in potential funding – despite these trusts having a monopoly on liquor sales in their districts.

🎰 The Pokie Problem

While the trusts themselves distributed $48 million over the past decade, a further $86 million came from pokie grants – funds generated by gaming machines hosted in their venues and distributed by affiliated societies (ILT Foundation and TTCF Ltd).

These gaming grants made up almost two-thirds of the total funding associated with the trusts. That raises serious questions about how community benefit is being delivered – and at what cost.

🔍 Why This Matters Now

The release of our report comes as Parliament considers a member’s bill that would repeal the monopoly rights held by these licensing trusts.

Supporters of the status quo argue that community funding would dry up without these protections. But our report shows the opposite: trusts could thrive – and communities benefit even more – in a competitive environment.

Competition isn’t just about alcohol policy. It’s about getting better value from public assets and delivering stronger returns for local communities.

🏗 Better Governance, More Impact

One of the more revealing insights from our report is that the trusts, despite their monopoly advantages, were consistently outperformed by community trusts using simple, diversified investment strategies. Community trusts averaged returns on equity of 6.2% over the same decade.

If the licensing trusts had adopted that kind of model – without operating businesses, and instead investing prudently – they could have distributed much more to their communities.

We’re not saying that’s necessarily the best way forward for all these trusts. But it is clear that monopoly liquor retailing is not the best way to generate community funding.

📊 Read the Report

We’ve published the full report and all the workings behind it so others can check the numbers and test the assumptions.

You can download the full report here:
👉 2025 Monopoly Trust Financial Report WALTAG.pdf

And the numbers behind it here:
👉 Google Folder Monopoly Trust Report