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Crown regained suitability to operate its casinos in Melbourne and Sydney this month, and is now charged with ensuring the business is sustainable economically.

The foreign high rollers who formerly propped up the bottom line of casinos in Australia are yet to return, and regulations imposed on the industry have made it less enticing for them to do so.

Carruthers told this masthead last week the challenges facing Crown reflect the macroeconomic issues faced by all hospitality businesses, but added that the regulations thrust on casinos should be expanded to the rest of the gambling sector.

“We fully embrace the need for regulatory change. It’s when these regulations are proven to be viable and have been implemented by us and are yet only imposed on us that it is a bit challenging,” Carruthers said last week.

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Crown Sydney, which does not have poker machines and was designed to be a high-roller focused casino, made 275 people redundant and closed one of its two gaming floors in August, just one year into its operations. The second gaming floor had been anticipated to reopen this year but Carruthers said this was unlikely to happen until trading picked up.

Crown Melbourne made about 200 people redundant this year. It transitioned its 2600 poker machines to carded play in 2023 at great cost, which resulted in reduced machine revenue at the Southbank precinct. Victoria’s pubs and clubs have not been required to mandate carded play in their venues.

Crown Perth has poker machine exclusivity in the state and is not anywhere near as affected by the macroeconomic issues hitting Sydney and Melbourne. Sources close to the company said about 50 jobs would be affected in Perth out of 1000 employees.

Carruthers said meeting the prescribed remediation time frames set by the NSW and Victorian regulators had required significant investment from Blackstone.

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The company has so far spent more than $200 million on its remediation effort across its three casinos.

He said getting the nod from state regulators in Melbourne and Sydney had shown the company had “changed its DNA”.

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