GGR sustains for Manila Casino market

Casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) performance in casino resorts at Entertainment City, continues to improve and is capable of sustaining until year end, say analysts Maybank.

Entertainment City casinos in including Resorts World, Solaire and City of Dreams Manila grew at 38 percent year-on-year in 16Q2, ahead of a 2 percent forecast for the 2016 fiscal year end.

“We think their strength emanated from the availability of phone betting to foreign players, unlike in Macau,” said analyst Rommel Rodrigo. He added: “Philippine gaming GGR has bucked the trend of its peers in Macau and Singapore for the past five quarters,” referring to industry data from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), the local regulator.

Earlier this year, Macau’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, issued an instruction to the Macau gaming sector saying that use of a telephone at a gaming table would no longer be permitted.

By contrast, in Asian casinos, such a gaming product has been typically offered to VIP gamblers that wish to wager on table games when unable to be physically present in a casino. Under such an arrangement, a junket agent, working on behalf of a high-stakes player, will typically provide a representative. Sitting at the casino table on behalf of the absent player, they would take instructions by telephone from the player or the player’s representative, regarding when and how to place a bet.

Gaming law specialists have told GGRAsia that such an arrangement runs the risk of breaching an important anti-money laundering protocol for casino operators; namely ‘know your customer’.