Sociedade de Jogos de Macau must think it’s pretty special. While its straggling Grand Lisboa Palace will stock some table games via the ‘cap-and-trade’ formula used by other operators, it has 
loftily informed the press that it expects the Macao government to give it 300 fresh-to-market tables. That’s far more than any other Cotai operator has received since the government-imposed slowdown on new gambling inventory. The $4.6 billion megaresort certainly needs all the tables it can get, especially since they will have to help support three hotels, including a Palazzo Versace and a Karl Lagerfeld-branded hostelry. SJM might be better advised to keep its eye on finishing the project by the end of 2019, coming in just under the wire of concession renewal — or rebidding — in 2020.
Macanese casino owners hoping for concession renewal might want to look to their customer service, which was rated “at best, just mediocre” in a recent mystery-shopper survey of 15 casinos. Cotai 
properties ranked better than older ones in downtown but the service-quality index of 2.29 was markedly worse than last year’s 2.37. (Top marks are 3.5.) Casino workers were rated for “proactive attitude” and “tolerance,” and table game dealers were found to be much worse (down to 1.87 from 2.27) and markedly less friendly. Four SJM properties were surveyed, along with two Galaxy Entertainment ones, Studio City, City of Dreams and Altira (Melco), MGM Macau and MGM Cotai, Wynn Palace and Wynn Macau, Sheldon Adelson‘s Venetian Macao and Parisian Macao. All right, gentlemen, you have your work cut out for you.
* Speaking of Sheldon Adelson — and when do we not? — he should brace himself for disappointment in Singapore. The Sanford C. Bernstein brokerage predicts gross gaming revenue in the city-state to be ‘only’ $4.5 billion this year, a 2.5% decline from last year. 
Slot revenues will be up 9% but mass-market table play is off by 4%. “Singapore is a stable growth market with significant cash flow generation,” wrote Bernstein’s boffins, but “The anti-corruption campaign in China, however, represented significant headwinds to the market in 2015 and 2016.” The Singapore market still hasn’t recovered, although Bernstein analysts predict it will reach reach $5.1 billion by 2022. “From 2017–2022 (estimate), we forecast Las Vegas Sands’ revenues to grow at approximately 6 percent,” they added. If that doesn’t make Adelson happy, what will? Besides, if Marina Bay Sands wasn’t already an architectural icon, its prominent featuring in Golden Globe-nominated Crazy Rich Asians has surely made it a must-see tourist stop.
