Crown reopens Sydney betting floors vowing to not ‘induce gambling’

Crown Sydney has reopened one of its gambling floors and says it won’t be encouraging gambling and plans to phase out cash.

The newly opened casino floor at Crown in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

Crown Resorts has reopened one its two high-roller gambling floors in Sydney as the city’s hotel rooms reach capacity ahead of global sellout concerts by Taylor Swift and Pink, and it looks to tourism to find new customers.

Crown Sydney chief executive Mark McWhinnie said the company was “very focused” on wanting to develop inbound tourism into the city and NSW generally.

“We are not trying to encourage or induce people to gamble,” Mr McWhinnie said at the reopening of the casino floor at Crown’s Barangaroo development.

“We have a facility that’s here for the entertainment of those people who like to come out and have a punt.”

Swiftie fans are a far cry from the initial vision by then-Crown owner James Packer of building a casino in Sydney that focused on Asian highrollers; most of whom were flown into the country by “junket” operators, who found the gamblers and gave them credit and happened in some cases to have close links with Triad gangs in China.

Covid border closures and the Chinese government’s crackdown on money laundering, as well as Crown’s own money-laundering problems – think Aldi shopping bags full of illegal cash being gambled at its Melbourne casino – has led to a change of strategy.Crown said it was now focused on tourism in Sydney, where it had to start operations without a gaming licence when it opened in December 2020 because the NSW government was still considering whether it was fit to hold a licence.

Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolau and Crown Sydney chief Mark McWhinnie on Friday. Picture: John Feder

Business Sydney chief Paul Nicolaou said Crown had played an important role in providing high-end accommodation and an “iconic” building.

“If we go around the world in the major cities, they have lots of different types of buildings in London, Greece, Italy. These places all have a mixture of old and new buildings,” Mr Nicolaou said. “The occupancy is nearly full here for the whole month of February because of Taylor Swift and Pink. We haven’t had the ­capacity to deal with the tourists coming in and we need facilities like this, which is a six-star hotel.”

To be sure, Crown is still first and foremost a casino operator and will be looking for signs that gamblers are coming back, particularly as it tries to offset big fines from anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism failings. Last year, the Federal Court dished out one of the nation’s biggest financial penalties in corporate history to Crown of $450m after the casino was found to have been asleep at the wheel while ­financial crimes were taking place in its facilities.

Mr McWhinnie said the new Blackstone-owned Crown was extremely focused on stopping money laundering.

“It’s not just a question of money in a bag,” Mr McWhinnie said of the notorious Crown security footage of an Aldi cooler bag full of cash being exchanged for casino chips. “It’s also a question of cash limits, and this is also going to be minimised because we are going into a cashless ­casino environment.”

The brand damage is no easy fix and, coupled with the slower than hoped return of Chinese visitors, Crown closed one of its Sydney gaming floors last August and fired about 100 staff because it was not seeing enough customers to warrant two VIP sections.

Mr McWhinnie said he hoped international visitors would provide extra foot traffic.

“We are opening this floor and not operating the level above because at this point we still think this floor is sufficient for demand,” he said.

“What we are looking to do is grow our membership base and as demand improves and increases we will then take a look at reopening a second floor … we are quite bullish about what we believe the international market is going to represent to us in the future.”

Blackstone paid $8.9bn to buy Crown in 2022 while the company was in the midst of three separate state government inquiries.

The US firm has a track record of turning around casinos, having purchased The Cosmopolitan, a bankrupt Las Vegas casino, in 2014 for $US1.7bn and recently selling it for $US5.6bn.

Whether its punt on Crown pays off remains to be seen.