Harm Minimisation in the Casino Industry

1
Harm Minimisation in the Casino Industry

• 15 September 2006
• Debbie Edwards
• SKYCITY Entertainment Group
• Manager Harm Minimisation

2
Overview

• Casino harm minimisation obligations
  accountability
• Casinos gambling harm
• Supply demand reduction models
• Alcohol gambling, adaptation theory
• SKYCITY Harm Minimisation Framework

3
Casinos Harm Minimisation

• Harm prevention and minimisation incorporated in
• Legislation, regulation policy
• Licences (venue and operators)
• Gambling industry operations
• Problem gambling services and research
• Directly accountable to
• DIA (casino inspectors etc)
• Gambling Commission
• Shareholders
• Non-compliance ?
• Gambling harm customers, families community
• Failed in duty of care, and public commitments
• Loss of licence
• Damaged public relations
• Revenue impacts ? unprofitable/unsustainable
  business

4
Key Legal Obligations

• Training
• Identification of (potential) problem gamblers
• All reasonable steps including behavioural
  indicators, customer disclosures, loyalty data
  analysis
• Information, advice and assistance
• Information about gambling at affordable levels,
  odds of winning, characteristics and warning
  signs, exclusion, seeking help, treatment
  services
• Encourage people to limit time/ and to get
  help/exclude
• Problem limitation programmes
• Assisting at-risk customers to gamble
  responsibly
• Exclusion
• Self/Third Party
• Conditions Counselling, mentor, SOGS screen,
  follow-up
• Breaches Must remove
• Other Obligations
• No ATMs, 20 note acceptors, PIDS
• Community liaison, environment and marketing
• All licence conditions subject to harm
  minimisation screen

5
SKYCITY Group Overview

• 5,000 staff in Australia and New Zealand
• Top 10 listed company (NZ), top 100 (Australia)

• Casinos Auckland, Hamilton, Queenstown,
  Adelaide, Darwin
• Largest cinema operator in NZ
• Largest food/beverage operation in NZ
• Auckland casino, 7 restaurants, 10 bars/café, 2
  hotels, convention centre, live music, theatre,
  Sky tower
• FY06 Revenue 757.9million profit
  120.1million
• Problem gambling levy 2million p.a.

6
New clients _at_ face-to-face services by primary
mode
7
Auckland casino 2004 visitors, exclusions,
harm

• Customers
• Auckland casino 5.5 million p.a.
• Exclusions
• 478 in FY06 (38 third-party and 440 self)
• Access to face-to-face treatment for primary
  modes
• CGMs 189 nationally
• Table games 109
• 30 of total new clients from Auckland ? 92

8
New clients _at_ Helpline Face-to-face services NZ
casinos
? Helpline
Counselling
? Machines
? Machines
? Tables
? Tables
9
Access to counselling vs gambling expenditure
CGMs NCGMs
New clients
Exp m
New clients NCGMs
Exp NCGMs
Exp CGMs
New clients CGMs
10
Access to Helpline by region - new callers
Auckland
Canterbury
Dunedin Casino opened
Wharf Casino Queenstown opened
SKYCITY Queenstown opened
SKYCITY Hamilton opened
Waikato
Otago
11
Supply demand reduction

• PuH assumption increased availability of harmful
  products (alcohol, drugs, gambling) increases
  harm
• Three key elements of (MOH) harm min. strategy
• Supply reduction
• Demand reduction
• Problem limitation
• Is a blanket approach to reducing supply and
  demand across all gambling modes justifiable?
• Casinos - no simple, linear relationship between
• harm (service utilisation)
• access/demand for the product (expenditure)

12
Alcohol gambling

• Alcohol Consumption has been reducing while harm
  has been increasing
• ALAC Its not the drinking, its how were
  drinking
• Certain patterns of drinking behaviour are
  associated with alcohol related harm
• Effective strategy target the underlying
  determinants of the behaviour (personal,
  environmental, social)
• Gambling Focus on certain patterns of gambling
  behaviour associated with harm

13
Adaptation Theory

• Abbott, Williams and Volberg (1999)
• As people and society more generally obtain
  increased experience with new forms of gambling,
  adaptions will be made that enable problems to be
  more readily countered or contained and the
  proposed relationship between rising gambling
  participation and increasing problems may be
  attenuated or possibly reversed.
• Adaptation hypothesis (Abbott, 2006)
• Initial exposure --gtincreases prevalence, then
  attenuates
• Attenuation hastened by regulatory PuH
  interventions
• Prevalence service utilisation
• 1991 3.3 (Abbott and Volberg)
• 1999 1.3 (Abbott and Volberg)
• 2002/03 1.2 (problem), 0.7 (at-risk) (MOH,
  2006)
• Service utilisation 2005 20.9 decrease new
  clients, 15.8 all clients, sustained in 2006
• Non-gamblers gamblers not at risk 98.1 (MOH,
  2006)

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Harm Minimisation Framework

• Proposed Vision
• To ensure customers have an enjoyable and
  safe entertainment experience by minimising
  gambling and alcohol-related harm.
• Purpose
• Duty of care to customers social responsibility
• Meet legal obligations
• Voluntary compliance/self-regulation
• Sustainable business
• Principles
• Customer and staff focused
• Aligned business and harm minimisation goals
• Consistent across the Group
• Evidence based (best practice, outcome
  measurement)
• Recognising and responsive to diversity
• Aligned with established models and strategies

15
Harm Minimisation Framework Key Objective Areas

• Internal culture
• External relationships
• Policy and regulations
• Prevention of gambling harm
• Host responsibility
• Research and data
• 7. Monitoring and quality improvement

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Key Challenges

• Testing some fundamental assumptions/models
• Blanket approach to reducing supply demand
• Relationship between expenditure and harm
• All gambling ? patterns of gambling behaviour
• Measuring outcomes and effectiveness
• How can we measure harm minimisation?
• Need an integrated approach to measuring outcomes
• Collaboration with stakeholders
• Development of Harm Minimisation Framework and
  revised Host Responsibility Programme
• All have obligations to prevent minimise harm
  COMMON GROUND