Australian casino operator Crown Resorts with the company launching a new rolling chip Premium Player Program at Crown Melbourne and Crown Sydney.
is run directly by Crown without the use of junkets or agents.
As scandal-racked gambling behemoth Crown Resorts tries to establish a “new normal” under its new-is US private equity owner Blackstone, a tentative dip back into the world of high rollers is under way; and the basis of the new project are:
First: no junkets – as promised by Crown chief executive Ciarán Carruthers when he took the job last year. Players will be background-vetted and must deal directly with Crown, not through middlemen. Seems sensible given some of the history.
Second: no direct marketing into overseas markets. (Let’s not mention all that unpleasantness with the Chinese authorities locking up a bunch of Crown employees a few years ago.)
Access to the program – which includes only baccarat – will be limited to players from interstate and a restricted number of overseas countries. The company wouldn’t tell us which countries were on the list, but China most definitely is not.
So, lots of rules but no guarantee that high rollers will bring their dollars back to Barangaroo and Southbank, especially in a tough international casino market.
And no end in sight to Crown’s quest to put its troubled recent past behind it.
Those days are now said to be long gone with a complete re-invention of the company, including a clean sweep of the Board of Directors and senior management, as well as a new owner in The Blackstone Group.
The program is not operational at Crown Perth which also understands that only players from certain countries will qualify and that regulators in Victoria and New South Wales have been actively working with Crown on developing the program, no doubt to ensure compliance with regulations following the Finkelstein Royal Commission in Melbourne and the Bergin Inquiry in Sydney.
