LT Game Chairman and head of the Macau Gaming Equipment Manufacturers Association, Mr Jay Chun, says he would be shocked if the government imposed a cap on the number of Electronic Table Game allowed in Macau.
In an upcoming interview with WGM’s sister publication Inside Asian Gaming ahead of this year’s MGS Entertainment Show, Mr Chun responded to an earlier suggestion by Director Paulo Martins Chan that the DICJ would explore capping ETG terminals in 2017.
“I don’t think Macau will introduce a cap,” Mr Chun told IAG. ” The case to do so is not compelling and it doesn’t really sit comfortably in an overall plan to bring revenue into an economy that has been striving for recovery.
“Equally important, in recent months, the Macau SAR Government has channelled efforts into encouraging the casino operators to place more focus on increasing the mass market revenues. The logic in this process is that the slots and ETGs are the main engines to drive revenues, so to damage this with caps would have a tough impact on the economy – especially when operators cannot look to other sources for income generation such as table games because table caps are already in place.”
Instead, Mr Chun believes the DICJ should head in the opposite direction and change the current classification rules which count ETGs as an active table under Macau’s table cap.
“That could help alleviate pressures on the Macau mix … the status of the Live Dealer ETG,” he said. “Macau is slightly out of step with the rest of the world in this area insofar as it’s the only jurisdiction that considers it a table game. The United States, Canada, Europe, Singapore and most of Australia consider it as ETG under the EGM category. Queensland, Australia considers it a semi-automatic table.
“So this is a particular grey area that could be examined. Regulatory consistency is very important not just to the future of businesses in our own domestic marketplace, but within the global industry. Macau plays a key role on the international stage and I think it would respond very positively to certain revisions.”
