Saipan lawmakers are looking to poker to compensate for a shortfall in casino revenues.
According to Asia Gaming Brief, at a meeting to discuss cost-containment and revenue-generating measures, House Gaming Committee Chairman Ralph Yumul raised the idea of lifting moratoriums on certain business activities, including poker arcades.
As of April 2015, Saipan casino law stated that “no new or additional licenses for poker, pachinko, or similar amusement machines, but not including electronic gaming machines, shall be granted or allowed to operate outside of the approved casino establishment.”
At that time, there were more than 900 licensed poker machines on Saipan. This number has dropped to around 500 poker machines due to the moratorium.
Gaming revenues fell 50 percent in 2018, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis; though Saipan is in the western Pacific Ocean, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is also a U.S. territory. Sablan said lifting the moratorium could cushion the impact of the casino industry revenue loss.
“The idea is to allow those businesses to expand, which could generate additional revenue for the government,” he said.
The sole casino on Saipan, Imperial Pacific International’s (IPI) Imperial Pacific Palace, is working to turn around its fortunes. In January, Marianas Variety quoted IPI Senior VP Donald Browne as saying Japanese VIP gamblers are the target demographic.
According to a report on CalvinAyre.com, IPI “is coming off the year from hell, a 12-month period that saw the company lose its CEO (for the second time) and its general counsel, get sued by a U.S. federal agency for alleged sexual harassment of female staff, and get caught up in a different U.S. federal probe of suspected fraud, money laundering and illegal campaign contributions” to CNMI Governor Ralph Torres, as well as a $240 million shortfall in the first half of 2019.
Legal, regulatory, and financial problems have dogged IPI almost since it opened as a temporary facility in 2015. IPI initially reported stratospheric VIP volumes, but later was forced to write off billions in player debt. It’s also failed to complete its resort hotel in Garapan, Saipan’s central tourist district, and has been unable to meet its financial obligations to the local government.
