CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Crown Casino has responded after a video from Aussie NBA star Ben Simmons appeared to suggest he was racially profiled after being held up by security at the entry to the embattled gambling venue in Melbourne.
The Instagram video was posted by the Philadephia 76ers All-Star last night before it was deleted. It showed Melbourne-born Simmons taking aim at security who he claimed turned him and his friends away because of their skin colour.
“I find it so crazy that the only guy who doesn’t get checked to go into the casino is this guy,” Simmons said in the video, before turning the camera on a white person in his entourage.
“I get checked, Mike gets checked and Tys gets checked. Thank you Crown Casino, damn, and they didn’t let me in, or him or this guy. Wow, we got a long way to go.”
Crown have moved quick to neutralise this PR disaster, after an absolute belting over the last few weeks – with non-stop investigations into the Casino lobbying Immigration and Border Force to provide seamless processing for high-rolling Chinese aristocrats and gang members.
Crown have issued an apology to Ben Simmons for treating him like one of those made up African gang members that everyone in Melbourne keeps reading about in the Herald Sun.
The Casino have also offered to provide him with the (V)VIP treatment: An invitation for him and his mates to go wombat hunting this weekend.
Common wombats are a protected species in Victoria, except in 193 districts including Murrindindi where the animals have been declared unprotected wildlife.
It is in these regions that Crown has been hosting VIP Casino guests, and taking them on wombat hunting safaris.
According to 60 Minutes, high-rolling tourists are being invited to hunt and kill wombats at a luxury hunting lodge run by a Chinese businessman who is a Crown partner with alleged crime links. It is just one of many of the bizarre and legally grey activities that the Federal Government has aided the casino in providing for their international guests.
However, Crown Casino will not be adding Australia’s most bankable athlete to that list of high priority guests, after failing to lure him out of the IBIS Budget Hotel that he checked into down the road after the racist incident.
The offer to go wombat hunting was also declined – after Simmons pointed out that shooting wombats is sick and depraved and not really a service that Crown Casino should be providing people with.
