Government still stingy with tables
SJM Holdings Ltd., one of six gaming concessionaires in Macau, plans to ask for up to 500 gaming tables at its Grand Lisboa Palace resort, now under construction on the Cotai Strip, according to GGRAsia.
Chief Executive Officer Ambrose So Shu Fai told the Macao Daily the operator will file its application when construction is almost complete, most likely in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Filings from SJM to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange indicated that the resort has capacity for 700 gaming tables and 1,000 slot machines. Asked about the recent unwillingness of the government to award a full complement of new-to-market gaming tables in Macau, So said the decrease in VIP revenues cannot be offset by mass market yet, although mass tables and slots have posted slight increases.
Last year, Melco Crown’s US$3.2 billion Studio City resort in Macau opened with 200 tables, though it asked for 400. The resort added 50 more tables in January. Galaxy Entertainment’s Galaxy Macau Phase II also opened with less than the requested number of tables, and reshuffled its table inventory across Macau to stock the expanded resort.
Union Gaming analysts say 250 tables seems to be as much as gaming operators can expect for Macau in the near future, according to CalvinAyre.com. Four more megaresorts are in development on the Cotai Strip: Wynn Macau’s Wynn Palace, MGM China’s MGM Cotai, Sands China’s Parisian Macao, and SJM Holdings’ Lisboa Palace.
The Macau government has promised to enforce a 3 percent cap on new tables in the gaming mecca until 2022, when the last of the Macau casino concessions expires. According to Union Gaming, that means the city will get a grand total of 1,097 tables during that period.
