The fine is a record amount for an operator in Australia, which comes amid a casino scandal in the country, where regional gambling regulators have been accused of not doing enough to punish casinos for regulatory failures.
However, now it appears that Crown is feeling the wrath of such pressures, with the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission deciding to hand out a hefty fine for the poor conduct of the resort casino.
AU$100m of the fine is comprised due to a failure to stop people gambling for more than 24 hours at a time, while the additional AU$20m is because the casino didn’t prevent customers from using plastic picks to simulate automatic play.
The record sum comes after an investigation into Crown by the Royal Commission, with the commission’s Chairwoman, Fran Thorn, saying: “These were not isolated breaches. They were part of a pattern of extensive, sustained and systemic failures by Crown that spanned roughly 12 years.
“The stories of financial loss or suicide attempts or forced sex work and other hardships experienced by individuals, their families, and communities; the people who gambled for two to three days straight with no one stopping them; the people who stole to keep gambling and the people who lost their families because of their addiction.”