SkyCity Entertainment Group has begun consulting staff on a restructure that could remove about 200 roles from the business, most of them at its Auckland precinct, as the company deals with customers who are spending less on nights out.
Consultation with affected workers began on Tuesday and is expected to run for around two weeks. The company has not confirmed a final number and says the proposal is not a decision.
Chief executive Jason Walbridge said the company was reshaping the way staff were deployed across the group so it was “simpler, smarter and more connected”. Walbridge said “the economic conditions facing our business are real, and they require us to make some hard choices about how we’re set up for the future”.
“No decisions have been made. We’ll consult with our people before anything is finalised, and our focus remains on supporting them through any change and on building a stronger SkyCity,” Walbridge said.
Unite Union, which represents casino and hospitality workers at the site, told RNZ that most of the proposed cuts sat in corporate functions, although some front line staff were also caught up in the review. Unite assistant secretary Tali Williams said the proposal was a bitter pill for staff.
“Profitable companies like SkyCity should keep people employed in these challenging economic times, they can afford to and should,” Williams said.
SkyCity is one of the larger private employers in central Auckland. Its most recent annual report put the Auckland workforce at about 2,860 people, out of a group of roughly 4,500 across New Zealand, Australia and its overseas offices. A cut of 200 roles would be in the order of seven percent of the Auckland headcount, though the company has been clear that the figure is a proposal rather than a settled outcome.
The restructure lands a week before SkyCity reports its full year result. The company told the market in July that its result for the year to 30 June 2026 will be released on Thursday 20 August, with a webcast and teleconference at 11am New Zealand time.
That result is already expected to be a weak one. In an update filed with the NZX at the end of April, SkyCity cut its full year guidance for underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to a range of $180 million to $190 million, down from the $190 million to $210 million it had signalled earlier. Reported earnings on the same measure were revised to a range of $155 million to $165 million.
The reason SkyCity gave then is the same one it is giving now. The company pointed to macro economic conditions squeezing discretionary spending across both New Zealand and Australia, and singled out the rise in fuel prices since March 2026 as a drag on both its Auckland and Adelaide precincts. Petrol is not a line item on a casino floor, but it competes for the same weekly household budget. Our fuel price tracker shows how far pump prices have moved this year.
SkyCity also said in that April filing that it had already gone past a $10 million cost saving target and was starting further cost saving work across the business. The staff consultation now under way is the visible edge of that programme.
The half year numbers show why. For the six months to 31 December 2025, revenue fell about three percent to $411.7 million, underlying earnings before interest and tax dropped to $85.5 million from $119.5 million, and net profit after tax fell to $14.4 million from $44.2 million. The dividend was suspended, with the board saying it would revisit the question later in the year.
Not all of that is about household budgets. SkyCity has been rolling out mandatory carded play, which requires gamblers to use a tracked card, and has lifted its anti money laundering compliance work after a run of regulatory trouble on both sides of the Tasman. Walbridge told investors in February that the compliance changes were costing the company customers, saying “as we uplift our compliance procedures, some customers are choosing not to play with us anymore. Some are electing to moderate their level of play.”
Alongside the cost cutting, SkyCity has been selling buildings to pay down debt under a $200 million asset monetisation plan. In July it confirmed the sale of its 99 Albert Street head office tower and adjoining Victoria Street properties for $74.5 million, and it has been seeking buyers for The Grand Hotel. Net debt had already come down to $594.4 million at the half year, from $772.4 million a year earlier.
The other thing hanging over the company is competition it cannot yet see. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 took effect on 1 May, and the Department of Internal Affairs has indicated the first licences for regulated online casinos will be issued from early 2027. SkyCity has an online arm of its own, but a licensed local market will bring well funded offshore operators onto the same legal footing at the same time as its physical business is losing foot traffic.
For the workers in the consultation, none of that changes the immediate question. The proposal covers roles across an operation that runs hotels, restaurants, bars, the convention centre and the casino floor, and Auckland’s hospitality sector has already shed jobs steadily through the past two years. Staff have until the end of the consultation period, expected around the last week of August, to put alternatives to the company.
What SkyCity says on 20 August will matter beyond its own payroll. The company is a reasonable barometer of how much spare cash New Zealand households have for things they do not need to buy, and the answer at the moment appears to be not much.
What do you think about the proposed job cuts at SkyCity, and what they say about discretionary spending in New Zealand right now? Leave a comment below and let us know.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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