Jay Chun: Confidence in local government

Friday 18th of December 2020

The Macau Government is working hard on the new casino license process. including reviewing all aspects of the existing gaming laws and regulations, as the landscape of the gaming industry has greatly changed since the grant of the previous concession back in 2002.

Mr. Chun is confident that the Macau Government, led by the Chief Executive Mr. Ho Lat-seng will continue to implement the policy in pursuit of the stability of the city, which in turn would be vital to ongoing prosperity of Macau.

Macau is facing rising competition from jurisdictions such as Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines as well as Japan, which are generally considered to be newer gaming jurisdictions than Macau having a relatively diverse customer base.

Considering this, going forward, I expect that the Government would evaluate a gaming license scheme that aims to include attracting a new set of customers from a wider place of business and exploiting potential beyond gaming which works best for all the stakeholders involved.

Mr. Chun has full confidence that the Macau Government is equipped with the ability and the vision to consider the new license bidding process that is best for Macau, best of its stakeholders, and fits well into the Greater Bay Area Development Plan in the long term.

As far as Paradise is concerned, since there are very few details out there for a full plan on what exactly the government is planning to do, the group shall carefully consider and evaluate this opportunity when the Government has announced the details. Having said that, since our mission is to become a world-leading gaming equipment supplier and our core focus in the past and in the future would continue to place emphasis on gaming technology, our primary focus would stay in the realm of gaming technology.

For years, the Macau Government has been making great efforts to label Macau as a World Center for Tourism and Leisure. Yet, the pandemic has uncovered her major weaknesses particularly as a city that is over-reliant on tourism, not just gaming.

To effectively diversify Macau’s economy, Mr. Chun supports that Macau should gradually develop other economic sectors beyond tourism. Despite our mission to diversify, we should not ignore nor forsake our gaming market, as it still makes a significant contribution to our economic prosperity and will continue to play a major role in our future economic development.

For Macau to diversify its economy, Mr. Chun supports that continual innovation in the marketplace is definitely required. In this regard, he thinks innovative technologies, including but not limited to AI and 5G could also improve the efficiencies of gaming businesses.

In recent years, the mass market segment has proved itself to have overtaken the VIP segment in terms of contribution to GGR and has become an important basis for the gaming industry’s sustainability.

This past history highlights that technology and innovation are indispensable to the life of the gaming market. Mr. Chun says that there is room for development of Electronic Table Games, particularly for LMG machines to capture this trend and welcomes to see policies from the government which can provide more incentives for the gaming manufacturers to invest on research and development on innovative gaming machines and products.

In the long run, this serves to attract more talent from high-tech backgrounds to come to Macau and to build it as the hub of gaming technology in the Greater Bay Area.