Up 18 percent for the year
Brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein has revised its estimates for VIP gaming revenues in Singapore by 18 percent.
In its full-year 2017 market-wide estimates issued November 3, Bernstein projected that Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa, controlled by the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Genting Singapore Plc respectively, will reach almost SGD2.35 billion (US$1.73 billion), compared to previous estimate of just under SGD2.00 billion.
GGRAsia reports that Bernstein expects most of the improvement to happen at Marina Bay Sands, with Genting Singapore’s 2017 VIP GGR 2 percent at SGD762 million, below the previous mark of SGD779 million.
“Genting’s market share relative to Marina Bay Sands will be difficult to improve materially,” wrote analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Cathy Huang. “The Singapore market generally has a more volatile win rate than the Macau market, due to fewer VIP players and larger average bet size.”
Marina Bay Sands benefits from “a better location in the center of Singapore, greater MICE exposure and in our view, a superior management team,” said the team. It expects the approximately 38 percent-62 percent share split “to shift in favor of Marina Bay Sands (especially in the mass market).”
However, the analysts say Genting Singapore will exceed mass table revenue and slot estimates. They raised their mass table estimate by 3 percent to SGD914 million, and slot revenue by 1 percent to SGD579 million.
They noted that mass “remains lethargic” and VIP will be “hampered by Genting’s new VIP commission structure announced earlier this year. Resorts World Sentosa remains a number two in Singapore’s duopoly.”
Casino.org reported that Singapore’s two casinos have faced difficulties trying to collect debts from their VIP clients. Bernstein said Resorts World Sentosa could be particularly affected by a “likely reluctance to expand VIP credit issuance.”
In related news, the South China Morning Post reports that migrant workers living in Singapore have fallen into “debt traps” at the city’s two casinos, mostly playing sic bo.
As of June 2017, 975,800 migrant workers lived in Singapore. AKM Mohsin, who publishes Singapore’s only Bengali newspaper and works closely with the Bangladeshi community, said he often hears stories of itinerant workers losing too much at the casinos.
“They are bored and frustrated, they have nothing to do and no entertainment. This is why they go gambling. When they win money, it makes them feel good,” he said.
In response, some of the companies that hire migrant workers are now requiring them to sign voluntary self-exclusion lists that prevent them from entering the casinos.
“We’ve had to help them internally by allocating a portion of their salary to repaying their debts,” said Zachary Chua, a manager at Hexacon Construction. “It doesn’t make sense to send the workers home when you realize they are in debt—they still have to settle the loan anyway.”
One worker identified as Bhaskar told the Post he’s lost S$15,000 over two years at the casinos—the equivalent of 10 months’ salary. Yet he continues to patronize the gaming halls.
“I just want to win back my money,” he told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Singapore enjoyed a 4 percent increase in visitor arrivals for the first half of 2017 and a 10 percent year-on-year spike in spending by tourists, according to data from the Singapore Tourism Board. Some 8.5 million visitors came to Singapore and spent S$12.7 billion (US$9.3 billion).
Shopping comprised 25 percent of receipts, but the strong growth “was due to the higher expenditure across all major components,” including hotels, food and beverage, sightseeing, entertainment and gaming, said board officials.
