By Josh Gordon
Crown Melbourne is promising to be the safest casino in the world after spending more than $20 million developing new swipe-card technology forcing poker machine players to set binding limits on losses and time spent gambling.
The casino, which came under scrutiny after the 2021 Finkelstein royal commission concluded it had engaged in “disgraceful” misconduct, said the introduction of the mandatory cards from Thursday signalled a “new era of transparency and commitment that has not been in the gaming and entertainment industry before”.
From Thursday, players using Crown Melbourne’s 2500 poker machines will be required to use a swipe card to set maximum losses and time spent.Credit: Jason South
Under the changes, gamblers using any of Crown’s 2500 poker machines will have to set maximum limits on how much money they are prepared to lose and how much time they want to spend playing. Punters will also have access to player activity statements, detailing their spending and playing habits over time, while Crown staff will use the system to track problematic gambling behaviour.
In an interview with The Age, Crown Melbourne chief executive Mike Volkert said the new technology was world first, costing “north of $20 million”.
But Volkert suggested there was unlikely to be a significant impact on Crown’s poker machine earnings, warning the greatest challenge would be educating tourists visiting for short periods who wanted to casually play poker machines.
“We need to educate them, enrol them very quickly and get them over that kind of learning curve ... I think for us [that] is probably the biggest challenge,” he said.
Crown Melbourne
The introduction of the cards, which experts say is likely to put pressure on other gaming venues in Australia and internationally to introduce similar systems, comes at a tricky time for the casino.
This week The Australian Financial Review reported that Ciaran Carruthers, the chief executive of Crown Resorts, which owns Crown Melbourne, was facing an investigation initiated by Crown over allegations he intervened to allow patrons to gamble even though they had been blocked by security.
As reported by this masthead, Crown wrote to employees on Wednesday confirming it had engaged a legal firm to investigate two separate allegations that Carruthers had intervened to allow blocked patrons onto the gaming room floor, asking them to come forward with any other allegations.
The Age has extensively covered claims of poor governance and bad behaviour at Crown, including past allegations of money laundering and a failure to tackle problem gambling.
Last year, the casino, which is owned by US private equity firm Blackstone, was hit with a maximum $100 million fine for failing to stop people from gambling for more than 24 hours straight at the Southbank complex. This year it was fined $30 million for a past practice – under the previous owners – of illegally allowing punters to gamble by signing over thousands of uncleared bank cheques to the value of at least $1.5 billion.
In August, former premier Daniel Andrews announced what he said was the toughest gambling and anti-money laundering measures in Australia, promising that all pubs and clubs would be forced to introduce carded play.
That followed repeated warnings that applying the changes only to Crown could simply cause problem gamblers and money laundering to shift to other venues.
But so far the government has not said when the changes, which are likely to be resisted by the powerful clubs lobby, will be rolled out to the state’s 26,380 poker machines in pubs, clubs and hotels.
Monash University gambling expert Professor Charles Livingstone said mandatory pre-commitment provided people with a tool to control their spending on poker machines, but warned that the Allan government would need to step up efforts to expand it to pubs and clubs.
“My sincere hope is that Crown has introduced a system which will encourage people, as they’re required to, to set sensible limits to control their playing … and obviously to get on top of the money-laundering issue, which has really been a bugbear for many years down at that place,” Livingstone said.
“But I don’t think there is any doubt that until there will be a transfer at least of low-level money laundering, even up to middle-level money laundering, to pubs and clubs, until this is in place across the state.”
Crown said it was now working to roll out the cards at its Perth casino.
Volkert said Crown was “absolutely willing and happy” to share information on the rollout of new technology with other venues also facing the introduction of mandatory carded play.
“We just have to work together and we need to have a commonsense approach to ... solve some very important problems. If we can share some of that with the industry, we’re very happy to do that.”
Under the changes announced in August, players in all gaming venues will be forced to use a card to sign in and set loss limits. So-called “load limits” – the maximum amount of money a player can feed into a poker machine at a time – will also be cut from $1000 to $100, while all venues except Crown will face mandatory closure periods between 4am and 10am.
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