Can Casino Checks Catch Crafty Criminals?

With information on customer behavior important in every business Crown Casino find themselves having to monitor even more closely

There isn't a business in operation anywhere that doesn't pay close attention to the spending patterns of it's client, customers or users. It doesn't matter if you're running a retail outlet in New Jersey, an architects office in Singapore or a travel agency in Malawi, knowing how the money in your market is being spent is the only way to get, and indeed stay, ahead of the competition.

Corporate entities spend significant portions of their revenue on making sure they're aware and up to date on the habits of those buying their products or services, and indeed an entire industry has sprung up of consultants, analysts and researchers to service this essential business requirement for information pertaining to the maximization of income. Sell the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong people and things can go awfully awry.

Thief Loses Money At Casino
• Crown Casino being sued for $1.5 million
• Bank employee stole it and lost it
• Regulator to study behavior of gamblers

From the teams at Honda putting together the slickest campaigns to leverage a pre existing desire on the part of customers towards them purchasing a new vehicle, to the guy in the corner store who finds they sell more beans if they're next to the nuts, business is painfully aware of the habits of its customers and how best to gain from them. The corporate world has almost turned it into an art form, with the most evident and manifest examples the retailers.

The big chain grocery stores now track what you buy, when you buy it, how often you do and the duration between purchases, they can estimate future demand based on trending popularity of products, and indeed monitor the success and failure of their marketing efforts to “push” certain products at certain times of both the day, month and year. Their loyalty schemes and reward points all just a way of linking you with the products you've brought to the checkout.

Information Essential To Business Profitability

US gambling laws having been slowly eroded by the passage of time and the growing common sense of the US public in voting for their repeal or replacement, has scattered casinos across the northeastern united states with more and more being planned and built all the time. The competition between them is fierce and their estimates on income and profit are very much dependent upon highly accurate information on customer behavior.

However it is not just the attraction of customers to a casino that the staff monitor with even slight variations in profitability of the various games and attractions being cause for adjustment of spatial allocation as soon as they become required. The close eye all casinos have on the margins these days, especially in the wake of Atlantic City's atrocious year where investors just up sticks and pulled out, extends way beyond the US.

With revenues down for six straight months now Macau is coming to terms with the effects of China's anti-corruption drive and tighter regulation of visa requirements and durations. Casinos in this Special Administrative Region of China are having to shift their business models and strategies to suit this trending business environment with many now readjusting to suit a less high-roller heavy market as they hide away from prying eyes.

Sites providing internet betting in the US have a major advantage, of course, since their statistics are ready made by their customers and a pattern of behavior on the part of one or all of a site's customers can be detected and tracked in almost real time. However that is not to say bricks-&-mortar casinos aren't as agile when it comes to satisfying new customer need, but there is certainly an advantage to having everyone wearing a name-badge.

Dipping Down Under

In Australia, however, the behavior of casino gamblers has of late become the focus not just of the attention of the business entities for whom it is important, but suddenly for seemingly everyone as Victoria's gambling regulator insists the casino help them in their quest to identify problem gamblers and the casino agrees to trial a system of monitoring early in 2015 as public pressure mounts following recent headline grabbing events.

The story of a man who hoodwinked a survivor of the Black Saturday bushfires of almost $400,000 and then lost a fair proportion of it at Crown Casino sparked a bit of a furore with even the judge of that case noting the victim's money was “lost and now belongs to the proprietors of Crown Casino” going on to be quite withering in his rhetorical questions concerning monitoring processes that might stop such a crime.

Of course no one has yet put forward a scheme that would be able to prevent people gambling with someone else's money (and indeed most bankers and stock traders would have to object instantly to such a system existing anywhere on the planet) which is a shame since very soon Crown Casino will be facing off against Bendigo & Adelaide Bank who are suing the gambling establishment for return of funds it says were stolen by an employee and lost at the tables.

The $1.5 million the bank wants back from Crown Casino makes it headline worthy and from the US poker rooms in Vegas to the gaming floors of Macau casinos operators will be watching the case develop with interest as the responsibility for gambler's funds being all above-board seems to be shifting in many places towards the casinos rather than the relevant authorities. The case will be heard next year.