Retendering21-22

  Maintaining game pace, ensuring dealer expertise and the availability of “smart” gaming tables are all important elements if the Macau casino market is to see a successful expansion of a baccarat ‘insurance bet’, a product that sparks some interest among players while also boosting house advantage, say several industry experts spoken to by GGRAsia. Guaranteeing dealers had sufficient training to handle the complexity of ‘baccarat insurance’ rules and payouts would be important if the option were to have a chance of gaining popularity, observed the experts. Baccarat insurance bets have been offered recently at the “Supreme” high-limit rooms at MGM Macau and MGM Cotai, according to a Citigroup  January survey  of Macau premium-table bets. GGRAsia approached MGM China Holdings Ltd, operator of the two properties; and the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, for comment on the insurance-bet topic, but had not received a reply from either, by the t...

set26 Credit and market research provider CreditSights Inc says it “does not rule out” the possibility of “tighter regulatory scrutiny remaining an overhang” for the Macau gaming sector, mainly by dampening sentiment in the VIP segment. Tighter scrutiny was “likely to have a more secondary effect, i.e., dampened high roller sentiment, rather than a direct GGR [gross gaming revenue] impact given that funding channels for gambling in Macau are already subject to strict controls,” wrote analysts Nicholas Chen and David Bussey in a Monday memo. They suggested that Chinese government rules on outbound investment by individuals, which took effect in July and include investments made via Hong Kong and Macau, “may have weighed down on punter sentiment” during August. GGR in Macau fell 1.2 percent year-on-year in August, to just over MOP21.89 billion (US$2.71 billion), showed data released by the city’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau. That had meant the city “slightly missing market...