James Packer’s battle to get a share of the Sydney casino market will probably be successful, according to many of the pundits on the floor of the AGE trade show in Sydney this week.
Packer, whose Crown Casino dominates the Melbourne skyline (he also has the Burswood Casino in Perth, Western Australia, and a one-third share of the Melco Crown in Macau), wants to move into the territory of Echo Entertainments, which has a monopoly on casino gaming in Sydney and which has just spent nearly A$900m (US$946m) on renovating its Star casino in Darling Harbour.
Echo has the only Sydney licence and has the monopoly until 2018, but Packer wants a slice of the action and, according to most of the onlookers from the industry, he will probably get it, one way or another.
Packer is attempting to win over the New South Wales regulators to his ambitions by promising to build a A$1bn (US$838m) resort on the waterfront overlooking the famous Harbour - as long as he can put gaming into it. He says that he needs gaming to make the investment pay off and is promising that it will only be available to high rollers.
This promise is regarded with a ‘pinch of salt’ by the industry, gathering in Sydney for the show, and instead they view the various options open. Packer might simply buy up Echo, or woo Echo into splitting the licence, or even have the entire project whisked away from him by Genting, the huge Malaysian operating company. Packer has taken a 10 per cent stake in Echo and has applied for permission to lift that to 25 per cent - but so has Genting.
