Crown’s ‘difficult decision’ to cut 1000 jobs in Melbourne, Sydney

There will be redundancies across the entire Crown Resorts group, including some management roles, with most job losses in Melbourne and Sydney.

Big job losses have been confirmed across the Crown Resort business.

Crown Resorts will slash up to 1000 jobs after a sharp drop in tourists as well as gaming restrictions hit its key properties in Sydney and Melbourne.

There will be redundancies across the entire group, including some management roles, with most job losses in Melbourne where the compny has its headquarters. Its Perth casino will be less impacted.

Crown Resorts chief executive Ciaran Carruthers said Monday morning the challenges at the company “reflected greatly reduced foreign tourism, a sharp decline in local workers in the city centres, and restrictions on gaming play in Sydney and Melbourne”.

Mr Carruthers said Crown was committed to its regulatory obligations and ongoing transformation, including safe gambling programs as well as its Melbourne and Sydney transformation plans and ongoing remediation in Perth.

He said the job losses were a difficult decision “but we are focused on repositioning the business for long-term success”.

International travel into Australia is yet to bounce back to pre-Covid levels, with new figures revealing the Chinese market is one of the slowest to recover.

Faced with tighter regulatory controls casinos are increasingly downplaying their gaming areas in marketing materials and targeting tourist with restaurants, shopping and theatre visits highlighted.

Hard times for Crown

The job losses come amid a deepening crisis for the casino sector that has faced a string of inquiries related to facilitating money laundering, fraud and other misdeeds.

Rival Star Entertainment is currently facing a second inquiry under Adam Bell, SC, on whether it is suitable to retain its Sydney casino licence.

Last month, the Victorian casino regulator decided Crown Resorts would be allowed to retain its Melbourne casino licence, but is on notice that Victorians expect it to be “run honestly and free of criminal influence”.

The lucrative casino licence had been in the balance after revelations the business had been facilitating money laundering and organised crime. It had been given two years to reform the business to prove it remained suitable to continue to hold the licence.

In June 2022, US private equity giant Blackstone acquired Crown for $8.9bn, ending James Packer’s control of the company.

Last year, Crown Resorts closed a VIP gaming floor and axed nearly 100 jobs at its new $2.2bn casino in Sydney’s Barangaroo, citing “macroeconomic challenges” which have kept high-rollers away. The company opened the gaming floor at the Sydney casino in 2022 after finally gaining approval from the NSW regulator.

Crown Melbourne still makes the lion’s share of the company’s revenue at $1.5bn, including takings from its hotel, but Barangaroo’s revenue is climbing at a faster pace, rising 139 per cent to $271m. IbisWorld said the spate of government inquiries had compounded a period of highly restricted patronage at casinos following the Covid-19 outbreak as border closures

and lockdowns sharply reduced turnover.

Overall, these disruptions had contributed to an annualised revenue decline of 4.1 per cent in the five years to 2024 to an anticipated $5.5 billion.

IbisWorld said that while the industry was set for a moderate recovery over the coming years the fallout from recent crises in governance would continue to constrain the overall financial and reputational performance of casinos across the country.

Overall, industry revenue is forecast to increase at only 1.1 per cent over the five years through 2028-29, to $5.8 billion.