The troubles of SkyCity Entertainment Group seem to continue unabated, with its Auckland casino having to close its gambling areas for five days from September 9, 2024. The shutdown was part of an agreement it reached with the Secretary of Internal Affairs earlier this year regarding lapses in its host responsibility obligations. We talked about this shutdown of SkyCity’s Auckland casino earlier this year in our news blog, but at that time, there were no confirmed dates for the shutdown.
SkyCity Auckland officially shut down its gambling sections for five days, from 12:01 a.m. on Monday, September 9, 2024, till midnight on Friday, September 13, 2024. The shutdown is total for the gambling sections; all other areas of the casino, however, remained open.
The closure was part of an agreement that SkyCity reached with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) of the Government of New Zealand following a DIA investigation into the casino’s breach of harm minimization obligations.
In what can only be considered ironic, the casino’s shutdown session happened to commence immediately after Gambling Harm Awareness Week.
The breach in the harm minimization obligations came to light after a customer complained that players could gamble continuously, uninterrupted, without being detected by the casino’s security and technology systems.
The breach happened between 2017 and 2021. A gambler spent more than 9 hours playing pokies at the casino, without interacting with any of the casino’s staff. This happened a staggering 23 times during the aforementioned period, resulting in the player spending a total of $1 million.
In its remarks, the DIA said the casino's shutdown would be a lesson—a reminder of sorts—to other gambling licensees of the responsibility that the license came with. The DIA said it was the duty of the operators holding the license to ensure they had implemented all required processes to minimize the possibility of gambling-related harm and ensure customer safety.
Among the operator's responsibilities was monitoring players as they played and ensuring they weren’t playing for long periods continuously. The reason was simple—failure to track these players could lead to gambling-related harm for the player and also to the people around him.
The Gambling Director of the DIA, Vicki Scott, said, “Taking this kind of enforcement action isn’t our preference. We would rather see hosts meeting their responsibilities in the first instance...However, we will take strong action where breaches have occurred to support the prevention of gambling-related harm in New Zealand”.
Back in July, SkyCity Auckland had said that the closure, whenever it happened – the dates weren’t finalized– could result in a loss of approximately $3 million over the five days.
The casino announced the dates of closure later, on August 2, 2024. As of now, it has revised its loss estimate to approximately $5 million, a whopping $1 million a day.
SkyCity plans to use the shutdown period to its advantage by conducting a five-day learning program for its staff. The training program would help create more spaces for collaboration and engagement between the casino's various departments. The training would strongly emphasise minimising the possibility of financial crime while improving host responsibility initiatives and overall customer care.
The learning program would comprise employee engagement sessions, including refresher training modules for approximately 700 SkyCity employees. Department-specific training and generic training modules would be provided.
Speaking about the programme, Jason Walbridge, the CEO of SkyCity, said that the DIA was right to hold them accountable for their host responsibility failures. According to him, each company employee would need to step up in order to rebuild the trust it had lost with its customers, shareholders, and the general population.
He further added, “We promised we would put the closure time to good use and have planned a five-day learning programme of employee engagement sessions where we will share information and take part in refresher training on host responsibility, minimising harm, and minimising the risk of financial crime.”
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