Macau Legend Co-Chairman against reduction of allowed gaming concessionaires

In a note sent Monday to Lusa, Chow, founder and co-chairman of Macau Legend – who previously showed interest in securing a gaming concession in the territory – underlined that “in accordance with Article 5 of the Basic Law’, the former capitalist system and way of life will remain unchanged for 50 years’ in the Macau SAR”.

For this reason, one of the heads of the company that operates several casinos in Macau under SJM’s gaming license maintains that the core value of the capitalist system is the market-based economy, based on the free market and competition.

The co-chairman of Macau Legend – which has investments in agriculture, banking, casino and hotels and is currently developing a tourism project in Cape Verde – thus assumes that “the number of gaming dealers should not be eliminated because the smaller number of dealers can result in oligopoly or monopoly”.

In mid-September, the Macau Government said it wanted to review the number and terms of concessions, as well as prohibit sub-concessions, intentions that are contained in the document of the public consultation on the revision of the gambling law that is currently under discussion.

Regarding the number of concessions, David Chow disputes the authorities’ argument that “quality is more important than quantity”. In his opinion, such an argument referred to in the document “is, in fact, questionable”.

The Government will proceed with a public tender to award new concessions, as the current ones expire on June 26, 2022, has decided to review the legal regime for the gaming, whose legislation is already 20 years old.

In relation to this matter, David Chow considered that the concession period should be divided into two categories, between new investors and old investors.
“The participation of new investors must be encouraged and new competition mechanisms introduced,” he said.

The official is of the opinion that “for an investment that exceeds tens of billions of patacas, a concession period of 20 years must be granted; for former investors (the six existing gaming operators), the concession period should be shortened accordingly”.

The Government’s proposal also foresees that the distribution of dividends to the shareholders of companies that exploit the game will depend on a government guarantee and the introduction of Government delegates to the concessionaires, for inspection purposes.

On the other hand, an increase in legal requirements for operators is also expected, as well as in social and criminal responsibilities.

Regarding the introduction of Government delegates to concessionaires, David Chow generally agrees, pointing out that “it is only necessary to clarify the supervision and functional authority of these representatives”.