SkyCity Auckland casino to close for five days

The closure is part of an agreement to resolve a suspension application related to compliance failures.

New Zealand.- SkyCity Entertainment Group has announced that it will close the gambling area of its Auckland casino for five days as part of an agreement with the Secretary for Internal Affairs to settle an application to temporarily suspend SkyCity Casino Management Limited’s (SCML) casino operator’s licence.

The agreement, contingent on the Gambling Commission’s approval, follows a complaint lodged in February 2022 by a former customer who gambled at the casino between August 2017 and February 2021. The complaint led to an application in September 2023 to suspend the licence for up to ten days.

The Secretary for Internal Affairs said that SCML failed to comply with its host responsibility programme (HRP) in detecting continuous play incidents due to a design error in its monitoring technology. SCML admitted to not meeting the HRP requirements and apologised for the oversight. It said staff failed to independently identify and address continuous play incidents, especially with customers displaying silent or hidden problematic behaviour.

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SkyCity chief operating officer New Zealand, Callum Mallett, said: “SkyCity places great importance on host responsibility and takes these failures very seriously. On behalf of the SkyCity Board and management team, I accept and apologise for these failures.”

SkyCity’s chair, Julian Cook, said: “It is clear that historically SkyCity’s focus, resources and investment have fallen short of what was required of the business. This is not acceptable and, as part of meeting our regulatory obligations and wider social licence, we are committed to fully addressing this. In 2021, we commenced a comprehensive multi-year transformation programme to strengthen how we manage risk across the SkyCity Group.”

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SkyCity said the impact of a five-day closure on full-year underlying group EBITDA would be around NZ$5m (US$3.04m). It has revised its early outlook guidance to between NZ$245m (US$148.93m) and NZ$265m (US$161.1m).