Crown Resorts CEO Ciarán Carruthers says finding a way to make the casino at Crown Sydney profitable will ultimately determine the property’s success or failure, but insists such achieving profitability is not a lost cause.
His comments in response to a question from Inside Asian Gaming at the Regulating the Game conference in Sydney come after Crown recent announced it was temporarily shuttering one of the two gaming floors at its Sydney casino and reducing the operating hours of the other.
Carruthers acknowledged that “Crown Sydney is clearly challenged” given that the property was originally designed to lure international high-rollers but said the company would look to reimagine its gaming concept should it prove successful in returning to suitability in the coming weeks.
“Crown Sydney has 349 hotel rooms and I’m sure there was the intent to have a multi-millionaire hard core punter in each and every one of those rooms, but that model is outlawed and is no longer of interest to Crown or Blackstone, so there is a requirement to rethink the business model at Crown Sydney,” the former Wynn Resorts Macau COO said.
“It already has a very successful hotel but there are only 349 keys, and it is a very successful food and beverage destination but only has a handful of restaurants.
“So, making the casino work there is critically important to the viability of Crown Sydney as a business, and without going into detail we are clearly having conversations with government and regulators.”
Carruthers noted that the company’s first priority was attaining suitability for its Sydney IR, with a decision from the regulator due to be handed down in a little over a month.
Crown, he added, has “done the work, we believe, to get to suitability” and should that occur “we can have genuine, meaningful conversations about what that model looks like to ensure the ongoing viability and success of Crown Sydney.
“Will it ever look like what it was originally envisioned to be? Absolutely not. Can it be profitable? Absolutely,” he said.
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