Sky City is raising eyebrows in New Zealand yet again. After half a year of various controversies, the land-based casino operator is making problem gambling experts nervous all over again. This time, the issue has to do with the company’s new monitoring practices, aimed at determining which players are at risk of becoming problem gamblers.
The local casino operator will be using data collected from player loyalty cards to analyze their gambling habits. Sky City wants to determine which players are potential problem gamblers, so as to ensure that they do not cause any harm. However, experts from the Problem Gambling Foundation do not believe that Sky City’s intentions are as innocent as that.
”SkyCity could use that material for its own purposes to keep people gambling for longer periods,” says Problem Gambling Foundation CEO Graeme Ramsey.
Experts also believe that Sky City will have to do a lot more work to prevent problem gambling if the company uses this information. They believe that the operator will have more responsibility to intervene if they have access to this sort of data. Considering SkyCity’s recent past in the country’s gambling market, that may not be something that the operator can handle at the moment.
