Inside Asian Gaming

The Star Entertainment Group made an EBITDA profit of A$12 million in the September quarter, and its chair told shareholders the way it treats VIP customers is its biggest problem. The numbers land as the group waits on a Federal Court penalty in AUSTRAC's money laundering case.

India's listed casino operator has now provided ₹4.44 billion for historical GST, a fraction of the ₹168 billion first demanded in 2023, and this quarter's charge covers demands it says it has strong grounds to contest. Casino revenue fell 13.4% in a quarter without King Casino and the Sikkim property.

SkyCity Entertainment Group will give interested parties due diligence information on the entire business, though its chair told shareholders that no new or improved proposal has arrived since the two it rejected. The same morning its chief executive said it bid for two online casino licences rather than three to stay within its return targets.

A New Taipei court order sought by the Criminal Investigation Bureau has taken both platforms' websites offline in Taiwan ahead of the 28 November local elections. Kalshi says it does not allow trading there, but its own market data shows open contracts on Taipei's, New Taipei's and Kaohsiung's mayoral races.

The regulator's quarterly breakdown by game shows that one product, the mass and premium-mass baccarat table, lost more revenue than Macau's casinos lost in total. VIP baccarat was flat and slots grew by almost a fifth, which is the only reason the quarter's fall stopped at 3.8%.

A casino applicant that studied the 10-hectare integrated resort plot at Colombo Port City has walked away during due diligence, officials told Sri Lanka's Parliament. Nobody has yet shown who stood behind it, and the casino rules any successor would need are still not in place.

Okada Manila drew more visitors, filled more hotel rooms and earned nearly a fifth more from its mass tables in the third quarter, yet revenue was flat and adjusted EBITDA fell 13%. Most of the mass-table gain came from a higher win rate rather than more play, and the VIP business kept shrinking.

Paradise Co's four foreigner-only casinos took more in the third quarter than in any quarter before it, even though customers bought fewer chips than in the second. Grand Korea Leisure recovered in September, but its quarter was barely ahead of last year's.

Macau's casinos won MOP18.06 billion in September, 1.2% less than a year earlier and 17.5% less than in August: the fourth monthly decline in a row and the weakest month of the year. It came in below a comparison base that a typhoon had already cut, and almost exactly at the figure Citigroup cut its forecast to ten days ago. It was published on the first day of Golden Week.

A week after reports that a smart-table mandate would not come before the second half of 2027, PAGCOR's chairman has named a start date and the four Entertainment City resorts it covers. The requirement is to begin converting, not to finish, and no circular, cost estimate or technical standard has been published.

SkyCity Entertainment Group will run a formal, UBS-led sale of SkyCity Adelaide after inquiries from what it calls "credible interested parties", and has hired advisers to engage with suitors for the entire group. The board says a sale is not certain, and that the approaches it has already had undervalue the company.

SJM Holdings' 2026 interim report shows what Macau's end of satellite casinos did to Macau's longest-established operator: less revenue and a smaller share of the market, but a better margin and more gaming revenue in the casinos it now runs itself. The loss still widened, debt rose to HK$30.2 billion, and management says the job now is productivity.

PAGCOR's chairman wants the online market written into statute before his term ends, so that it "will not easily be scrapped". A Hong Kong-listed newcomer has meanwhile shown how much of that market still rests on the regulator's accreditations, and how quickly they can go.

The Philippine regulator wants live visibility of bets across the gaming floor, according to Inside Asian Gaming, which reports that a mandate originally planned for this year has slipped and would start with the integrated resorts. PAGCOR has not announced the policy.

Chairman Alejandro Tengco told the IAG Academy Summit the split of PAGCOR's regulator and Casino Filipino roles now waits on the Office of the President, and that a PAGCOR app to steer players to licensed sites lands in the fourth quarter.

The Statistics and Census Service's annual survey shows receipts up 8.8% and gross surplus up 9.3%, but the spend on player rebates and commissions rose 11.6%, the second year running it has outpaced the top line.

The Department of Internal Affairs says three-quarters of the country's 32 pokie trusts were non-compliant, a third engaged in deliberate "creative accounting", and NZ$11.5m has so far been committed back to communities. One trust lost its licence for six days.

A Hong Kong default judgment against a Macau high roller cannot be enforced in Singapore because gambling debts offend the country's public policy, the High Court has ruled, even where the gambling was lawful at a licensed casino. The decision unsettles a 2004 precedent and the way Asian casinos extend credit to customers whose assets sit in Singapore.