SkyCity has made many changes, according to its chief operating officer who spoke today. Photo / Andrew Warner
SkyCity has made many changes, according to its chief operating officer who spoke today. Photo / Andrew Warner
“The team’s gutted,” SkyCity Entertainment Group’s chief operating officer Callum Mallett said after the casino agreed to a five-day closure for breaching its host responsibility programme.
Speaking to the Herald from the company’s Albert Street headquarters, Mallett said the company had implemented changes and planned further moves to ensureproblems like the long-play issue with one gambler were not repeated.
“On this occasion and on a number of occasions, we failed with this customer and for that we are deeply sorry and being rightfully held to account as a business. This is a disappointing day for us,” Mallett said.
“We don’t turn up to work each day to cause harm. We turn up to give people a fun, exciting entertainment offering and we’re sorry that we failed in this instance.”
How much the gambler won or lost, what he played on, and how long he gambled for during any one visit has not been revealed.
But the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) said he was at the Auckland casino between 2017 and 2021.
“DIA’s investigation identified 23 incidents where the customer was able to gamble continuously at the casino without detection by SkyCity’s technological system for identifying continuous play and without appropriate staff oversight or interaction,” the department said in a statement.
Since mid-2021, the company had implemented a risk transformation programme. More staff had been employed in that area and those staff had more capability.
Facial recognition technology was being used in the public areas of the Auckland casino as well as within the main gaming floor and at ATM machines so the business was alerted to people making constant cash withdrawals or those who’d been in the area for a long time.
“We use facial recognition technology to ensure that we don’t allow banned and trespassed players into our property and also help us with long play and people who must stay for long periods of time in the property,” Mallett said.
But perhaps one of the most significant moves was a new SkyCity electronic gaming card with personal details on it, able to be loaded with money but also monitored.
SkyCity said facial recognition technology was being used in public areas of the Auckland casino as well as within the main gaming floor. Photo / Dean Purcell
“In the middle of next year, across all our New Zealand properties, we will be introducing mandatory carded play,” Mallett said.
“Essentially if you don’t have a card, you won’t be able to play and that card will help us monitor people’s play and spend but really importantly it will allow customers to be able to monitor their play and spend as well,” he said.
Pokie machines would automatically lock so customers could not play once they reached certain points in time, he added.
The continuous play issue arose in September last year when the company said Internal Affairs had applied to temporarily suspend the company’s licence in New Zealand.
That followed the customer complaint in February 2022. He gambled at the SkyCity Auckland casino from August 2017 to February 2021.
The department secretary said SkyCity casino management did not comply with requirements in its Auckland host responsibility programme about detecting cases of continuous play.
The Herald reported how those threats last September had spooked investors, with a bombshell announcement wiping a quarter of a billion dollars off the company’s market value.
SkyCity was in discussions with the Gambling Commission over exactly when the five days of the suspension will occur.
Mallett said the continuous five-day period would not be over a weekend but from a Monday to Friday and begin at 12.01am on the Monday morning.
Jarden’s Adrian Allbon said Internal Affairs had previously applied for a suspension of up to 10 days.
