Sky City to close for five days over breaching host requirements

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Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi

SkyCity has agreed to close its Auckland casino for five days, after admitting to breaches of host responsibility requirements.

The agreement with the Department of Internal Affairs means the gambling area of SkyCity Auckland will be off-limits for five consecutive days in 2024 – though no date has been specified.

The five-day closure would dent SkyCity’s underlying earnings by around $5 million. It expected group underlying earnings for the 2025 financial year to be between $245m and $265m.

The agreement is conditional on Internal Affairs withdrawing its application to temporarily suspend its casino operator’s licence. The department has applied to the Gambling Commission to withdraw the suspension application.

The application was first lodged in September 2023 for a period of about 10 days, following a complaint to the department by a former customer who gambled at the Auckland casino from 2017 to early 2021.

Internal Affairs alleged the casino did not comply with host responsibility rules relating to continuous play by the customer.

Under the agreement, SkyCity acknowledged “it did not meet the requirement in the SkyCity Auckland Host Responsibility Programme (HRP), and therefore the licence”.

“[SkyCity] has also acknowledged that it failed to exercise the level of vigilance required by the HRP to use staff observation and intervention independently and alongside that technology to identify those incidents of continuous play by the customer and then act appropriately – such vigilance being especially relevant for customers like the complainant whose problematic behaviour was silent or hidden,” it said.

In a statement, SkyCity’s New Zealand chief operating officer Callum Mallett apologised for the “significant” failings and said the company was rightfully being held to account.

“SkyCity places great importance on host responsibility and takes these failures very seriously.

“This relates to our obligations around host responsibility – essentially, how we look after our customers to protect them from gambling harm,” he said.

“In this case, one of our systems failed to alert us to levels of continuous play from a particular customer. We are deeply sorry for the harm caused to this customer.”

Board chair Julian Cook said the agreement resolved the matter. “However, there is still considerable work required and underway to improve our risk systems, including our approach to mitigating financial crime and problem gambling.”

Internal Affairs acknowledged “swift action taken by SkyCity to improve their system for detecting indicators of potential problem gambling”.

“It is encouraging to see the work SkyCity has already done to lift its performance in this area and its public commitment to continue to improve,” it said.

Mallett said SkyCity had facial recognition technology embedded across the business and was introducing 100 percent carded, account-based play next year. “Simply put, this means no card, no play.”

The Problem Gambling Foundation said the suspension was a first – but it sent a clear message to gambling operators and it applauded the decision.

The foundation’s Andree Froude told Midday Report the action against the casino was significant.

“This is the first time a suspension of operations has happened at a casino like this, and we applaud the [Department of Internal Affairs] for taking this action,” she said.

“It does send a really clear message to any gambling operator that if they don’t uphold their host responsibility, there are consequences.”

Currently, a gambler can play continuously for five hours without a break, something the Problem Gambling Foundation said was too long.

Froude said they wanted to see action like this taken against other gambling operators that fail their responsibilities.

“We really hope that it does continue to happen if gambling operators are not following their host responsibility requirements, which are requirements that are under the law,” she said.

“We don’t want to see people being harmed so it’s really, really important that, if they are failing in their legal requirements, then there are tough consequences.”