Las Vegas Sands Corp plans to rob Peter to pay Paul, if necessary, in order to get enough tables to open its Cotai five and six plots if the company manages to get the developments built before 2013.
“The conversation with the [Macau] government at this point is that we’re guaranteed a certain amount of the tables we need to open, and the maximum amount of tables we need in 2013,” Michael Leven, President and Chief Operating Officer of LVS told our sister publication, Inside Asian Gaming, at the opening of Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
“We will support those ‘missing’ tables with tables from our other facilities until we get the tables in 2013. In other words, we will use some tables we currently have that are not being maximised,” added Mr Leven.
Sheldon Adelson, Chairman and Chief Executive of LVS, also told IAG in a separate conversation that a USD1.75 billion credit facility toward the cost of the mothballed Cotai development was due to be signed off three days after the MBS opening. But LVS executives spoken to recently by the South China Morning Post indicated financing would not be completed until later this month.
LVS’s aim is to add nearly 700 tables to the market in its satellite development across the road from The Venetian Macao and the Four Seasons Macao, the company’s existing infrastructure on Cotai. The new site will also have three hotels managed under the Sheraton, Shangri-La and Traders brands. But last month the Macau government announced that the total maximum number of tables allowed in the market between now and the end of 2012 would be 5,500. Macau’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, says there were 4,811 tables in the market in the first quarter of this year, so that leaves only 700 tables to allocate between now and December 2012 (give or take the odd 50 or 100, as this is Macau, not Singapore).
Galaxy Entertainment Group has been told privately it can have 400 tables for its new Cotai project, Galaxy Macau, due to open in the first half of 2011. LVS has apparently been given a similar assurance on table numbers for Cotai five and six, but is prepared to shuffle its existing table quota from its other Macau venues in order to benefit from the revenue surge that traditionally accompanies new venue openings in Las Vegas and Macau.
The idea of LVS potentially facing a table shortfall for Cotai five and six assumes, of course, that the company will have the whole project completed before 2013. Another important announcement from the Macau government stating there should be a ‘one-for-one’ policy on Macau construction sites (i.e., one local employed for every migrant worker) could slow down workforce recruitment for the work and push up costs.
