Gaming | MGM awarded 125 new-to-market tables

MGM China Holdings will be granted 100 new-to-market live dealer gaming tables ahead of the January 29 opening of the casino operator’s second Macau resort, MGM Cotai, with an additional 25 to follow starting from January 1, 2019. It will also be permitted to operate around 900 new slot machines.

The announcement was made yesterday by the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lionel Leong, who said that the casino operator is also permitted to transfer up to 77 tables from its peninsula property, MGM Macau.

The Cotai-based resort previously advertised that it had the capacity to accommodate nearly 500 gaming tables. A total of 125 new-to-market tables may therefore come as a disappointment to MGM China, even though the allocation is broadly in line with that given to its rivals in the last two years.

In 2015, DICJ authorized 150 new-to- market tables for the second phase of Galaxy Macau, and a further 100 to Studio City. That was followed by a combined 300 tables allocated to The Parisian Macao and Wynn Palace last year, equally split between the two properties.

The allocation, which was authorized by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, comes in light of a government policy to cap the growth in live-dealer tables.

The cap was introduced in 2013 when Francis Tam was the Secretary for Economy and Finance. It was presented as a measure to control the expansion of the gaming sector, mature an industry prone to large swings in revenue, and force operators to resort to non-gambling activities in order to attract customers.

Macau had a total of around 6,400 live-dealer tables at the end of 2017. DB