Less than 7 percent in Q1
Manila’s Entertainment City resort district saw a spike in gross gaming revenue for April, according to preliminary reports. GGRAsia cited brokerage Maybank ATR Kim Eng Securities Inc. and analyst Rommel Rodrigo in its report on the uptick.
Based on data from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., Rommel saw “indications of a dramatic improvement in growth for Entertainment City casinos with aggregate GGR surging approximately 69 percent year-on-year.” That’s a marked difference from the first quarter, in which GGR rose just 6.6 percent over 2015 to PHP18.07 billion (US$389.6 million).
Just two of four casinos planned for Entertainment City are now open: Solaire Resort and Casino, a project of Bloomberry Resorts Corp., which opened in March 2013; and City of Dreams Manila, operated by a unit of Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd., which opened in February 2015.
In the pipeline are Kazuo Okada’s US$2 billion Manila Bay Resorts, which is expected to open before the end of 2016; and West Side City Resorts World, a development in the works from Travellers International Hotel Group. West Side City was supposed to have opened in 2019, but that debut has been pushed back to 2020. Travellers International is a joint venture between Andrew Tan’s Alliance Global Group and Malaysia’s Genting conglomerate. The partners already operate the Resorts World Manila casino outside the Entertainment City zone.
Maybank attributed much of the recent upswing to City of Dreams Manila.The surge in GGR for April took place before Macau banned VIP proxy bets, but that development is likely to benefit Entertainment City, reports investment bank Morgan Stanley. “We expect the ban on phone betting in Macau to benefit the Philippines VIP market,” the report said. “Proxy betting has been growing rapidly in Manila, something which is supported by PAGCOR.”
