Responsible Gambling

We take our responsibilities as a host very seriously and each of our properties has a robust Host Responsibility Programme in place. Our commitment in this space reflects our international operations with the highest standards applied to safeguard each of our communities.

Gambling can be a fun and enjoyable entertainment activity. However, it can also have harmful effects on some individuals, their families, and their communities. Our challenge is therefore to ensure that our business provides entertaining and profitable, yet safe and responsible, experiences and environments.

Maintaining Leading and Best Practice Host Responsibility:

We are immensely proud of the culture of care we have developed within our casinos and continue to focus on ways to ensure that this culture of care is maintained and that we have the highest standard of host responsibility best practice. Over the past financial year, we implemented additional host responsibility measures to improve our ability to prevent and minimise harm from problem gambling, including:

• the introduction of an updated Host Responsibility Programme (approved by the Gambling Commission) for each of our New Zealand casinos. The updated programmes include SkyCity’s commitment to introduce mandatory carded play across our New Zealand properties by July 2025;
• adapting and enhancing our facial recognition technology at the SkyCity Auckland and SkyCity Hamilton properties to monitor repeat withdrawals and multiple declined transactions at ATMs for indicators of problem gambling, with the technology soon to be implemented in SkyCity Queenstown;
• refreshing all of our staff host responsibility training programmes to ensure staff are up-to-date on the latest harm minimisation practices;
• increasing our host responsibility resourcing, with additional staff recruited as Responsible Gambling Hosts and Host Responsibility Executives and for host responsibility training and data insights; and
• the introduction of PatronScan technology at all of our casino properties to support the identification of minors and verification of ID documentation.

A robust Host Responsibility Programme is in place at each of our physical sites, and within SkyCity Online Casino, to prevent and minimise harm from problem gambling. All SkyCity staff receive training in host responsibility awareness. A dedicated team of experienced host responsibility specialists are employed at each of SkyCity’s land-based casinos and, through our partnership with GiG, an experienced harm minimisation team is in place for SkyCity Online Casino.

In a dynamic casino environment, maintaining effectiveness, relevancy, and consistency in harm minimisation best practice is an ongoing challenge. In response to that challenge, SkyCity continues to explore available technology solutions, seek expert advice, consult stakeholder groups, and source a range of research material.