Casino hotel Legend Palace – the latest property from Hong Kong-listed casino services firm Macau Legend Development Ltd – will open with up to 66 live-dealer gaming tables, company co-chairman and chief executive David Chow Kam Fai (pictured) told GGRAsia in an emailed reply on Thursday.
At least 46 of those gaming tables would be earmarked for mass play. Mr Chow stated.
“We are planning to house between 46 and 55 mass tables, plus 11 self-run VIP tables, during the grand opening period,” Mr Chow said. There are “plans to open three” junket-promoted VIP rooms “at a later stage”, the Macau Legend chief executive added.
Mr Chow said Macau Legend was targeting to open Legend Palace at the end of this month. The property has 223 hotel rooms, and is the second new hotel under a redevelopment plan for Macau Fisherman’s Wharf. The other, Harbourview Hotel, opened in February 2015 but it features no gaming facilities.
“We expect both hotel and casino operations [at Legend Palace] to open at the same time,” Mr Chow said.
Macau junket operator Cali Group said in January it planned to run a VIP gambling room at Legend Palace. Upon enquiry from GGRAsia, Macau Legend did not confirm which or how many junkets would have operations at Legend Palace.
Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong Vai Tac said on Wednesday that the Macau government was granting 15 new-to-market gaming tables – all earmarked for mass play – to Legend Palace. The new property would also be allowed to host 91 slot machines, Mr Leong added.
The number of new-to-market tables granted for gaming operations at Legend Palace is “lower than what was applied for”, Mr Chow told GGRAsia.
“Excluding the 15 new tables, Macau Legend currently has 179 tables, and we can reassign tables from other casinos within our group to meet operational needs at Legend Palace,” he noted.
Macau Legend currently runs two casinos in Macau: the Babylon Casino at Macau Fisherman’s Wharf and Pharaoh’s Palace Casino at the Landmark Macau casino hotel.
As a gaming services business, Macau Legend does not hold table quota in its own right, but instead must rely on the quota of one of the existing Macau casino operators. It currently collaborates with SJM Holdings Ltd in relation to table quota.
