BOSTON MAYOR MARTY WALSH isn’t the only public official driving Steve Wynn to distraction. The Las Vegas businessman told financial analysts on Thursday that Chinese government officials are threatening to undermine the casino business in Macau by enforcing a cap on live-dealer table games.
Wynn said the huge hotel/casinos under construction in Macau, including his $4.1 billion Wynn Palace, were all predicated on an expected level of gaming activity. But he said the local government appears to be enforcing a cap on live-dealer table games, forcing operators to operate with far less gaming revenue than they had planned on.
Wynn said he was stunned to hear that Melco Crown Entertainment, a Hong Kong company that is opening a casino/hotel complex in Macau later this month, was told recently it would only be able to run 200 instead of 400 table games.
“The table cap is the single most counterintuitive and irrational decision that was ever made. Here we are spending billions of dollars creating nongaming facilities and then arbitrarily someone says you should have only this many tables,” he said. “No jurisdiction ever has imposed that kind of logic on us. It’s turned our human resource planning inside out and upside down. You can tell by the tone of my voice the extent of my frustration on this point.”
Wynn plans to open the Palace resort in the first half of next year. He said the company based all of its planning on 500 table games at the resort, but acknowledged that may no longer be the case with the government’s decision to restrict table game growth. “I’m a tremendous critic of that decision,” he said.
Wynn said he has never laid off employees in his 45 years in the gambling business, but indicated the table cap could change that. “I don’t like facing that possibility one bit,” he said. He said he remained optimistic government officials would come to their senses. “I’ll say at the eleventh hour the government does the right thing,” he said.
In contrast with his angry tone about China, Wynn seemed to downplay his ongoing dogfight with Walsh. He referred to “friction created by the mayor” of Boston, who Wynn said continues to insist that a casino in Everett is also located in Boston. Still, Wynn said, he planned to break ground on the Everett casino in a few months and open in 2018.
In its third-quarter earnings report, Wynn Resorts said revenues and net income were off sharply. Net revenues were off 27 percent for the three-month period, led by a 38 percent dropoff in revenue at the company’s existing Macau hotel/casino complex. Net income was $73.8 million, down nearly 62 percent from the same three-month period a year ago.
