The Macau government needs to be in the “driving seat” in order to guide effectively the city’s next generation of casino concessionaires in expanding non-gaming, and attracting clientele from beyond China as it wishes, said a senior industry executive with experience of the Macau market.
Chen Si, chief operating officer for Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment’s under-development Inspire Entertainment Resort in South Korea, was speaking during a Thursday panel called “Transforming Macau”, hosted at industry trade show Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2022, in Singapore.
Mr Si has previously worked in executive roles at Hong Kong-listed casino services firm Macau Legend Development Ltd, and casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp, in the United States, in Singapore, and in Macau.
“There is a disconnect between the [Macau] public policy goal – which is noble and good – and the practical level,” suggested Mr Si.
He added: “..there’s an absence of… leadership from the government’s level, and really the working level, to… coordinate and develop policies and design mechanisms that drive these [non-gaming] offers into Macau.”
The panel also discussed the recently-promulgated revised gaming law for Macau, and the freshly-launched public tender process for up to six, fresh 10-year gaming concessions.
Cash burn, VIP ‘correction’, non-core biz
With Mr Si were Ken Jolly, vice president and managing director, Asia, of casino equipment and gaming content provider Light and Wonder; Michael Zhu, senior vice president of gaming consultancy The Innovation Group; and Jorge Godinho, visiting professor of gaming law and criminal law at the University of Macau.
Boosting non-gaming was likely to be “challenging” for whoever operates a Macau concession after the expiry of the current ones on December 31, noted Mr Jolly. Incumbent operators were currently “burning money” amid ongoing Covid-19 disruptions to the city’s hospitality trade, he stated.
Mr Si mentioned the Macau government’s newly-outlined discretion to reduce tax payable on casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) as an incentive for operators to bring in more customers from overseas. The details of how that would be implemented are yet to be made public.
“The goal [of attracting non-mainland Chinese players] is so far-reaching that in the short term, it’s hard to get to that goal and get the tax incentive,” suggested Mr Si.
Non-gaming amenities at resorts were “fine”, and “everybody is doing that,” he observed. But added, referring to other things mentioned on the Macau authorities’ shopping list for the industry: “When you get into health tourism or sports tourism: those are very specialised areas that the concessionaires are not expert in operating or designing.”
The Macau government tended to “rely on the concessionaires” because the authorities think the operators “have the resources and the global reach to bring a lot of these offerings into Macau”.
But Mr Si added: “In reality… I think the government needs to be in the driver’s seat here.”
He remarked that Singapore – host to the casino duopoly of Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa – was a “great example” in the way it had defined and tried to realise the public-policy role of its gaming industry.
Law professor Mr Godinho observed that Macau now had focus on building a “large mass market”, with a new regulatory framework, “correcting” the “outgrowth” of VIP gaming promotion business seen in the past two decades.
The amended Macau gaming law had some “vagueness”, such as reference to a minimum annual target of casino GGR for each gaming licensee, observed Mr Si.
“Any logical person will assume that minimum GGR depends on the overall environment: that could be probably the budgeted number in the government’s annual budget…” Mr Si remarked, “That’s the range that gives the concessionaires a bit to worry about… as there’s no clarity on how that will be implemented in practice.”
