The Sefton Group, the owner and operator of the Palace Hotel and Casino on the Isle of Man, has questioned the government's decision to seek to award a second casino licence.

In its trading statement for the past year, the company’s chairman, Sir Miles Walker, revealed plans to replace the existing hotel and casino with a new hotel, casino and family leisure complex at Middlemarch in the centre of Douglas. Plans to allow a second casino development on the island cast doubts over whether Sefton will be able to achieve this objective, however.

“The government’s current aim of seeking to attract a second casino operator is potentially an impediment to our redevelopment plans as the Isle of Man market is simply not big enough to sustain two casinos,” he said. “The UK gaming sector works on a population of approximately 400,000 per casino and, even allowing for our visitor traffic, there is no UK equivalent of two casinos co-existing with a catchment population as low as the Isle of Man’s."

The condition put forward by government that a second licence should not impact detrimentally on the current licence holder is “unrealistic,” he said.

“The market is both small and mature, with 45 years of casino operation, and there is no reason to believe that a wholly new market would emerge if a second licence was granted.”

Sir Miles called on the government to carry out an economic study as part of the process of determining whether a second casino is viable.