Macau Gives Wynn Far Fewer Tables Than Were Sought, But Company 'Satisfied'

Steve Wynn’s new gambling facility in Macau, called Wynn Palace, is slated to open Aug. 22 with fewer table games than he had asked the local government to approve.

According to reports, Wynn wanted 500 but applied for 400, eventually receiving just 100, with an additional 50 coming over the next two years. The casino will also have more than 1,100 slot machines, but the number of tables approved is a big deal because historically Macau’s gambling industry has relied on high rollers dumping lots of money at the tables. That model made it the largest gambling market in the world, but when mainland China decided to crackdown on what it saw as corruption within the junket industry’s business of extending credit to high rollers, gambling revenue plummeted citywide.

The decline has been ongoing for two years.

The local and national government are pushing casinos toward relying less on gambling dollars than they once had, so that means less of a focus on VIP players.

High-stakes baccarat specifically once generated 91 percent of Macau’s gambling revenue.

Wynn Resorts told Bloomberg that it is “satisfied” with the table allotment. Casino developers Galaxy Entertainment Group and Melco Crown Entertainment opened new casinos last year that were given 250 tables each, Bloomberg reported.

Last fall, Steve Wynn had harsh criticism over the table game cap.

“Here in America, we would never have a Las Vegas of the diversity we’ve had if the city had told us how many tables we could spread,” Wynn said. “The table cap is the single most counterintuitive and irrational decision that was ever made.”

Previously slated to open in March, Wynn Palace, which will be the billionaire Las Vegas mogul’s third casino in the former Portuguese colony, took six years to build.

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