Skycity Entertainment Group owns Skycity casinos. Presently, it owns five casinos across New Zealand and Australia. Since its origin in 1996, the company expanded, taking over various casinos. Its original casino was named Auckland Casino. Then they bought other properties like Adelaide Casino, Darwin Casino.
They also acquired stakes in several companies, such as Christchurch Casino. SkyCity Casino claimed to suffer a significant loss during Covid 19 Pandemic and took taxpayer-assisted funds to cover the losses worth millions of dollars. This raised controversy about them being fraudulent as they have refused to repay the loans to earn high annual profit.
SkyCity Casino During Covid 19 Pandemic
Skycity’s net profit fell 76% to 78.4 million in six months. The main reason is a restriction in the tourism business. The foreign high rollers could no longer contribute to sky casino’s profit. Casinos were still open to their domestic customer base. Poker machines in the opened properties of SkyCity casino have generated a significant amount of revenue. This recovered their losses to some extent.
Skycity casino had to cut off thousands of employees to recover such losses. In August 2021 Auckland casino property of SkyCity had to be closed for 19 days. The casino was found to have several confirmed cases of covid. This outbreak led to the isolation of 1000 guests and 240 staff. The casino claimed that it suffered a loss of around 20 million dollars during this period. The company had to shut the casino for 37 days due to Alert Level 2 restrictions in New Zealand.
Amidst Covid 19, SkyCity overcame its challenges, and after almost a year of 19% drop, SkyCity casino shares rose 1.4 percent to $2.91 on 18th February 2021. While Auckland casino was suffering losses, Hamilton made a profit of 22%, and Queenstown made a 51 percent profit to 18.1 million and 2.2 million dollars respectively. On the other hand, New Zealand properties got a 10 million dollar of subsidy payment. Adelaide casino in Australia lifted a 16 percent revenue and made a profit of 96%.
The online gambling market represented by SkyCity Online Casino site, reviewed also by CasinoDeps experts, made a massive profit of 7.5 million dollars. SkyCity Entertainment Group recovered most losses caused by land-based casinos through online gambling sites.
Measures Taken by SkyCity Casino to Make Profit
Focused on Online Casino Market
Covid 19 outbreak was a nightmare for the tourism and hotel businesses while it proved to be a blessing for online companies such as the online gambling market. The online gambling market expanded to a large extent in 2020 itself. It is a progressively growing market and is expected to grow at a steady rate of 11.5% for the following years.
The online casino of SkyCity is licensed and operated by Malta. SkyCity Casino spread its branches in the online gambling market in 2019 but made enormous profits from 2020 to 2021. One hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars ( 2019) went to 7.2 million dollars (2021) of profit in the covid year. The number of active users rose above 45000 in the same session.
Revived Domestic Casino operations
During the global pandemic of covid 19, the entire world was in lockdown. SkyCity Casino lost its foreign customers, and the government strictly restricted tourism. Besides, the SkyCity Entertainment group suffered a considerable loss in their hotel and tourism sectors.
The only option left for the company was to rely on domestic business. Michael Ahearne, Chief Executive of SkyCity company, said, “Local gaming has performed well when open and operating without restrictions.” It is observed that the casinos of Hamilton and Adelaide performed well amidst covid situations.
During covid, SkyCity casino observed that poker machines made more profit than that of the table games. Most of the casino properties of SkyCity ran pretty smoothly during covid, generating enough revenue for the company.
Conclusion
Like any other business, the covid year was tough for SkyCity Casinos. It is impressive that they fought all the challenges that came their way, including a 72% profit drop, closure of Auckland Casino, etc. Ultimately in the fight for the survival of the fittest, they proved to be the best in the market by reporting such high annual profit in the most challenging year. To sum up, in June 2021, SkyCity Casino made a net profit of 156.1 million dollars and a normalized profit of 90.3 million dollars.
