Australian operator Crown Resorts recently announced that it will be launching a new VIP credit system—known as the Premium Player Program—for its properties in Melbourne and Sydney; the system will not be rolled out at its Crown Perth facility.
According to Inside Asian Gaming, the program is available to players who meet certain background and suitability requirements, and nationality is a factor as well, given that some countries are being omitted altogether.
Additionally, the program is being run directly through Crown, without any junkets or related services. State regulators from Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) have also been working with the operator to implement proper safeguards, according to IAG.
Crown had stopped running its previous international VIP system in the wake of numerous shortcomings and violations of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism funding (AML/CTF) laws that were highlighted in separate suitability inquiries in both NSW and Victoria.
The operator’s questionable relationships with several notorious Asian-based junkets—such as the now-defunct Suncity Group—were also a huge point of concern highlighted in the inquiries.
Since then, the company has essentially turned all the way over, with a whole new board of directors, new executive management and a new parent company, U.S.-based Blackstone Group.
Ever since CEO Ciarán Carruthers first came into the job approximately a year ago, he has remained adamant that the company will seek new ways to bring in players internationally, but without the use of junkets.
“We’re not in the junket business if that’s part of the question,” Carruthers told IAG in September of last year. “That’s not part of the plan going forward.”
“I think as the international markets start opening up again, with the very strict controls we have in terms of KYC and AML, we’ll be able to let qualified international players back in again,” he continued. “That will happen sometime in the future but we’re a long way off from that right now.”
