Vietnam’s planned three-year experiment in locals gaming may not be enough to persuade Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. to jump into the market.
“We’re not necessarily in love with the conditions or the three-year test period,” the Sands chairman and CEO said in comments to analysts in an April 26 first-quarter earnings call. “We don’t want to spend billions of dollars and find out in three years they’ve changed their mind and they’re not going to allow locals in. So we want to see how that goes.”
According to GGRAsia, when the plan was unveiled in December, two casino resorts were mentioned for the pilot scheme, one in the Van Don Special Economic Zone in Quang Ninh, and the other on the southern resort island of Phu Quoc. Both casinos are said to be under construction.
The government has stated that citizens over 21 years old with a certified monthly income of at least VND10 million (US$443) will be able to enter local casinos and gamble under the program. The Vietnam Investment Review reports that the casinos in question would be required to retain for three years documentary evidence of the financial qualification of any local players, “so that government agencies can supervise, monitor, check, and investigate.”
VIR and VietnamNet also reported that the casinos mentioned in association with the pilot may not be the only ones under consideration. The stories cited an unidentified source who said, “This is very surprising because before the decree was issued in January, some sources were saying that the government would only authorize pilot programs in casinos in the northern province of Quang Ninh’s Van Don and the southern province of Kien Giang’s Phu Quoc Island.”
