Inside Asian Gaming

MARCH 2018 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 9 Pagcor freezes new casino license approvals Philippines gaming regulator Pagcor has announced a moratorium on new casino licenses nationwide following a direct order from President Rodrigo Duterte. According to a report in the Inquirer , only applications received before 13 January 2018 to build new casinos in the Philippines will be considered, with Pagcor currently drawing up a detailed memo outlining the new restrictions. “The President told me last 11 January to freeze the entry of new casinos because there are already many of them and there are more wanting to apply,” said Pagcor boss Andrea Domingo. “We’re just processing now the applications we received before the President ordered the moratorium. After that, as of 13 January, we’ve stopped accepting applications.” Pagcor has recently issued three new casino licenses in Cebu – Emerald casino which is owned by businessman Dennis Uy, Asian Gaming Group’s Millennium casino and the Gokongwei Group’s Universal casino. Domingo also pointed to Clark County – home to six operational casinos – as a major casino hub that “can be like Las Vegas with the airport there and the planned high speed train to Manila.” However, she said that the issuance of more casino licenses would be put on hold. “We’re stopping and we’ll let the market mature first,” she said. of Dreams and former City of Dreams Manila President Geoff Andres returning to Macau to take over Studio City. Kevin Benning – former Vice President of Gaming Operations at City of Dreams Manila – was promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in place of Andres. “At the end of the day … our decline in our mass hold rate and our mass GGR was really a function of some of our top players trying other properties,” Ho explained. “We recognized that at City of Dreams, which is our flagship property, in terms of our really core business which is mass and premium mass, we weren’t keeping pace with the market and ultimately we benchmark ourselves at the highest level of that segment. “What I had then identified previously was that there was a leadership issue and the fact of it is, as senior leaders of the company, we need to get the best of out of our people and have all of our teams work together in unison. “I felt that the prior Property President couldn’t get the team to be at their best and what I have seen with David at Studio City in his 1.5 to two years with us is that he really pulled the team together and he runs the operations very meticulously – and we’ve seen drastic improvements at Studio City. That’s the reason why we made the management reshuffle.”