{"id":7908,"date":"2020-07-07T21:40:37","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T21:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=7908"},"modified":"2026-04-24T03:51:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:51:05","slug":"skycity-warned-over-online-gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/skycity-warned-over-online-gambling","title":{"rendered":"Skycity warned over online gambling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Skycity has been warned for sending an email to loyalty customers suggesting they use its online casino during lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>New Zealand.- The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in New Zealand has issued a formal warning to Skycity over the promotion of offshore online gambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In an inquiry prompted by a complaint from a casino customer, the authorities found the group had been promoting its Malta-based online casino, SkyCityCasino.com to its loyalty customer mailing list in violation of the section 16 of the Gambling Act 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This violation could carry a NZ$10,000 penalty but the casino escaped with a warning after the DIA decided the breach was not intentional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DIA acting director Chris Thornborough said: \u201cWe expect SkyCity to exercise a high level of caution in future to avoid breaching the Act. The department will continue to keep an eye on the operator and take any future breaches seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A spokesperson from Skycity told RNZ that the company had sent an email to loyalty customers to warn them of the impact of Covid-19 lockdown measures on the casino, and that this communication stated that the website\u2019s operations were still ongoing. The spokesperson said the DIA&#8217;s feedback would be taken into account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Skycity\u2019s casinos in New Zealand began to reopen after <strong><em><a aria-label=\"undefined (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/skycity-new-zealand\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lifting restrictions<\/a><\/em><\/strong> from the pandemic in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skycity has been warned for sending an email to loyalty customers suggesting they use its online casino during lockdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Skycity received a formal warning from New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) for promoting its Malta-based online casino to loyalty customers during a COVID-19 lockdown, violating Section 16 of the Gambling Act 2003. While a potential NZ$10,000 penalty was waived due to the breach not being deemed intentional, the operator faces heightened regulatory scrutiny. This incident underscores the complexities of cross-jurisdictional iGaming promotion for integrated land-based and online operators.","focusai_entities":"Skycity, Department of Internal Affairs, Chris Thornborough, RNZ","focusai_location":"New Zealand, Malta","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), affiliate_publisher (0.7), marketing_crm (1.0), investor_analyst (0.8), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Future Regulatory Scrutiny?","query":"What specific measures will the DIA implement to monitor Skycity's future promotional activities, and what are the potential escalations for subsequent breaches of the Gambling Act 2003?"},{"label":"Cross-Jurisdictional Compliance?","query":"How will this warning influence other land-based operators with offshore iGaming verticals in their approach to cross-jurisdictional marketing and regulatory compliance in markets like New Zealand?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,439,158],"tags":[338,1137],"class_list":["post-7908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-legal-news","category-slider-home","tag-new-zealand","tag-skycity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7908"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19690,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions\/19690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}