Singapore Casino Exclusion Failures Highlights Need for Better Screening Systems

The Singapore Auditor General report for 2025 was released on July 15th, and it revealed big breaches in the exclusion policies at Singapore’s landbased casinos. From April 2023 until March 2025, 120 excluded persons slipped past the identification checks and got into the casinos. And they entered the casinos 1,100 times while being registered as excluded parties.

The breach was not limited to landbased casinos either, as Singapore betting pools uncovered 1,358 bets placed by excluded persons online. Amounting to S$75,800 in the same period of time. While these are not serious figures for Singapore, this is one of the most luxurious gambling hotspots in Asia, it does expose a weakness in Singapore’s gambling regulation. And its execution. The Auditor General summed up the roots of the problem, and will step up the enforcement on casino operators with targeted checks and data monitoring by June 2027.

Singapore Regulatory Failure

The Auditor-General’s 2025 report didn’t hold any individuals to blame, it highlighted the weaknesses in the exclusion-screening procedures managed by the casino operators. It was not a breach of compliance from the casinos, they just weren’t well enough prepared for data migration mishaps or outdated/changed documents. During a 2 year stretch from April 1 2023 to March 31 2025, landbased casinos saw:

• 120 excluded people enter the casinos
• 107 of the individuals were reported
• These 107 people entered the casino 1,100 times
• The 13 remaining people entered the casinos 108 times
• 26 non-excluded people exceeded their monthly casino visit limits

To give an idea of the scale of this breach, the Singapore landbased casino market makes around $6 billion in annual gross gaming revenue. There are only 2 Singapore casino resorts, and these attract between 30 and 40 million visitors every year. In a percentage, if you take the conservative figure of 30 million and calculate how many excluded people slipped past the casino security, it is around 0.0002%.

The other part of the audit related to sportsbook excluded or limited accounts. 79 excluded accounts remained open at Singapore Pools – the officially regulated betting provider – when they should have been restricted. And those bettors placed 1,358 bets to a total amount of S$75,800, or 59,000 in USD. The tote betting, sports bets, lotteries and horse race betting on Singapore Pools make up an industry that pulls in around $2.5 billion in GGR.

Gambling Rules in Singapore

Putting aside the relatively small scale of this development, it is important because it highlights some of the key issues that operators face today. In KYC compliance and exclusion screenings, something that is becoming more challenging with stricter conditions.

Singapore’s gambling scene is controlled by the Gambling Regulatory Authority in Singapore, and there are only 2 landbased casinos in the country. Singapore Pools is a state-run company that is the only operator allowed to provide lotteries. It also does sports betting, horse race betting and tote betting. For landbased gambling, virtually all forms of casino games are legally accepted, including slots, blackjack, poker, roulette, baccarat, and other table games. The rules for visitors are:

• The legal age to enter is 21+
• Foreigners and locals can enter, but local have to pay entry levies
• Singaporeans must pay: S$150 for 24 hours, S$3,000 annually for entering
• Authorities can impose monthly limits on patrons
• Casinos are required to screen and identify visitors

Singapore’s Major Casino Resorts

The island nation of Singapore has two major casino resorts, the Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa. It is quite astonishing that this small country, the size of which is actually just less than the urban footprint of New York, is among the biggest gambling hubs in the world, next to Macau and Las Vegas. But it can be explained by one important fact. Unlike Macau, Vegas, or even Atlantic City for that matter, Singapore is a finance and business hub, and therefore it doesn’t just attract gamers.

Singapore casinos can attract wealthy visitors from China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as international corporate executives, finance professionals, and entrepreneurs. This creates high value traffic for the landbased casinos, with VIP players who can outspend the average Vegas traveler, and the Singapore casinos have their fair share of high stakes games. Macau Casinos historically used junkets to attract high end gamers, but in Singapore, there is no VIP junket system, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World manage without them. Instead, they have their own, internally supervised, premium programs with dedicated hosts and experiences catered to the needs of their high value patrons.

Importance of Tighter Enforcement

It is exactly for that reputation as a destination for VIP and high end clientele that Singapore must protect its casinos. In 2023, the Marina Bay Sands Resort suffered a massive data breach. A cyber attack on its servers saw the personal data of over 665,000 patrons leaked and sold on the dark web. The information was obtained from the Sands LifeStyle rewards program, with player names, email addresses, phone numbers, country of residence, and loyalty program membership numbers leaked. The root cause being a software migration project, that left a webpage without the proper security protections, and this was hit by the hackers. This security breach went unnoticed for 6 months.

While that was not directly casino-related, as this was not the casino’s rewards program but that of the LifeStyle rewards program, it was a major failure and damaged the reputation of Marina Sands. Now, 3 years on, this casino technology failure is nowhere near as dramatic, but it highlights yet another lapse in the internal infrastructure, or at least, outdated frameworks for the visitor screening and identification.

How did it happen? The report suggested:

• Players who had new identification numbers were not updated in the database
• Some exclusion orders were not properly communicated between the systems
• Security failed to link excluded people to the identification screenings
• Some exclusion records became inaccurate during the system migration process

Compliance Control Failures

The reason casinos have these exclusion records is to deter gamers from picking up bad habits, or spiralling into addiction. It is a precaution that the Singapore casinos take to ensure the well being of their patrons, and individuals can also self-exclude voluntarily if they have concerns. Setting a monthly limit for visitors also helps deter problem gambling, but in the compliance failures, there were breaches in these laws too.

Again, this was not a deliberate tactic by the operator, it was simply a failure based on systems that were not properly enforced, or missed crucial details. Earlier this year, major Vegas casino operators were fined by the Nevada regulators for shortcomings over their anti-money laundering policies, a case that made the headline news because of an illegal bookmaker gambling circle. Matthew Bowyer, a betting broker, exploited Resorts World, MGM Resorts, and Caesars, operators who were fined a collective $26.8 million for failing to detect the illegal gambling syndicate.

Targeted Checks and Better Enforcement

Fortunately for the Singapore casinos, this compliance failure was nowhere near as costly or damaging. It won’t impact the casinos’ credibility, but in good faith, the Auditor-General raised this as an important point for the operators to focus on. The gambling authorities will also focus on assisting them in tightening their entry screening and data handling, starting with targeted checks in 2027.

Disciplinary acts may be taken against employees or operators who are found guilty of non compliance, and the targeted checks would be supported by data analytics. As casino security standards evolve, with automated screening, digital identity verification and interconnected compliance systems, the importance of tightening these and ensuring there are no weaknesses becomes a must.