NEWS & NOTES

Tiger Resort, which is set to unveil Phase I of its Okada Manila resort in Entertainment City this year, is pitching to sponsor the 2017 Miss Universe pageant. Phase I includes a casino, two hotel towers, food and beverage outlets, retail outlets and a spa on 21.55 hectares (53.25 acres) of land.   ?   Victoria’s Crystal Garden is no longer under consideration as a potential casino site, say officials of the British Columbia Lottery Corp. BCLC announced in July that Victoria had won the contest to host the capital region’s second casino. View Royal will remain the primary gaming site.  ?   The Chinese Ministry of Finance says lottery sales in the country rose 20 percent in July on a year-on-year basis. Welfare Lottery ticket sales increased 6.7 percent to 16.6 billion yuan in July, while Sports Lottery sales jumped 37.6 percent to 15.8 billion yuan, for more than US$4.8 billion in revenues.  ?  MGM China has 6,000 job openings in Macau, including at its upcoming MGM Cotai, which will open next year. More than 800 Macau residents attended the company’s first recruitment fair last month. MGM China is a subsidiary of U.S.-based MGM Resorts International.   ?   Macau Polytechnic Institute Professor Zeng Zhonglu says it will be difficult for local casinos to ban employees from entering their workplaces during their free time. The city’s Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau announced in July it may prohibit dealers or all gaming employees from entering local casinos.   ?   Macau Legend Development’s planned sale of its Landmark Macau did not go through as planned. The former Pharaoh’s Palace Casino, which operates under the SJM license, was to have been acquired by Wide Power Enterprises Ltd., but a letter of intent expired in September. The sale could be completed after the buyer gets regulatory approvals in Macau and Hong Kong.   ?   The number of overnight visitors from Mainland China to Macau in August exceeded the number of same-day visitors, according to data from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service. More than 991,500 overnighters from the mainland traveled to Macau that month compared to 987,800 day trippers. Mainland Chinese made up 68.7 percent of all tourists to Macau for the month.   ?   China Construction and Engineering has won the contract to build the Light Rail Transit depot in Cotai for 1.07 billion patacas (US$134 million). The LRT section in Taipa and the depot are expected to be completed in 2019  •  Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) September 12-14 provided a three-day customized training program to the Institute of Lotteries and Casinos of the Province of Buenos Aires (IPLYC). The training took place in the cities of Pilar and Tigre. According to GLI, the Lottery, “Interested in strengthening their technical knowledge and expanding their professional toolkit, reached out to GLI’s world-renowned educational program.”  •  Research and Markets has released a report projecting that increased smartphone and mobile platforms will held drive the global gaming market to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7 percent for the next five years, to 2022. This will create an aggregate market of $635 billion by that year, said the report. The report also predicts that the Pacific Asian market will be the locus of major casino development during this period. The report looks at six regions—North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.  •  Cache Creek Casino Resort, owned by Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is poised to begin a proposed expansion. Tribal leaders have proposed adding 459 suites to the existing 200-room hotel resort, which opened in 2004. The new structure would be a nine-story tower.  The project would also add a pool, ballroom, new dining and expansion of “back of-house” space. The tribe released a Tribal Environmental Impact Report on the proposal last week. It proposes building slow vehicle turnouts on State Route 16 to mitigate traffic impacts. Construction could begin as early as next year.