Melco Crown, originally scheduled for Monday, will announce the opening day of Studio City on Wednesday, according to ggrasia.com , but Bernstein Research expects it to take 100 days to be ready to open.
Studio City Casino Looks To Receive 150 New Live Game Tables From Macau Government For New Casino Resort. According to Bernstein analyst Vitali Umanski, studio city casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd “will be a Base Mass-focused property with a wealth of unique non-game features that will attract more and more visits.” Melco Crown owns 60% of Studio City.
In January, Lawrence Ho Yau Lung, co-chairman and chief executive officer of Melco Crown, said he “doesn’t know” how many gaming tables the casino will receive from the Macau government when it opens, and though no public announcement has been made, the company “hopes” that t0 will receive more than 400 during the casino’s opening day. The number on the game table is close to the number the Macau government provided to Kotai when it opened its casino resort, Galaxy Macau, in May.
All new market game tables allocated within Macao, effective from 2013, apply to the cap scheme. The system is designed to limit Macau’s new gaming table growth to 3% by December 2022, calculated by local casino regulators from 5,485 gaming tables ending in the fourth quarter of 2012. According to a Macau government official, the expected 2,000 new market game tables within the system guidance for the Macau market between January 2013 and December 2022 may be distributed between new openings, rather than according to a specific number each year.
Carlo Santarelli and Danny Valoy, analysts at Deutsche Bank, said the casino is likely to open in the last week of October after China’s “Golden Week,” which starts in the first week of October. Gambling income usually increases during national holidays in the People’s Republic of China. Tourists from the mainland often travel to Macau to celebrate the festival. However, during last year’s vacation, the average daily gambling intake at casinos in Macau decreased by about a third.
Located in Cotai, the property has been heavily promoted among China’s new casino resorts, and it is believed that the casino will open successfully. Studio City Macao is Asia’s first leisure resort incorporating television and film production facilities, retail, gaming, and hotels.