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Crown Casino Ltd.'s Gaming Expansion Plans

Crown Casino Ltd, which is owned by James Packer, is preparing to announce the details of a one hundred million dollars planned expansion of its gambling operations at the Crown Casino in Melbourne as it hopes to improve its appeal with mass-market players. A Crown Casino board meeting on May 9th, 2011 approved the final plans for a new gambling, beverage and food section at the western part of the gaming facility. Crown Casino's expansion plan include new gaming facility targeted a younger gaming market by using the extra casino table gaming licenses awarded to the group after the extension of its license to operate their casino in 2009. Under the agreement, the state government increased the number of casino table games allowed under Crown Melbourne's casino license by 150, in return for a bigger tax on electronic casino gaming machines. Crown Casino is also paying $132 million dollars in extra taxes over the period of four years to increase the number of casino table games allowed at Crown Casino to five hundred. The details of the plan are expected to be announce later this week. Crown Casino and gaming rival Tabcorp Holdings, the owner of Sydney's Star City and the Jupiters casinos in Gold Coast, are allocating billions of dollars in expenditure programs like remodelling VIP gambling areas and hotels. Crown Casino is spending more than $300 million dollars this year to remodel the Crown Casino in Melbourne and the Burswood gaming facility in Perth. It plans to spend another seven hundred million dollars in the next two years. Crown Casino will have spent more than $1.5 billion dollars between 2009 to 2013. James Packer, who owns forty-three percent stake in Crown Casino, informed The Australian in March 2011 that spending on their gaming properties would be their main focus for the next two years in order to ensure that they could attract new customers and keep off local and international gaming competition. Crown Casino has launched private VIP gambling rooms and VIP villas in its Crown Towers hotel to cushion a drop in its high roller revenues after Singapore open two new casinos in 2010; the $5.94 billion dollars Marina Bay Sands and $4.4 billion dollars Resorts World Sentosa. Crown Casino is increasing the size of its main gambling area, the Mahogany Room. Crown has a significant presence in the Macau market through a joint collaboration with Melco, which is owned by Lawrence Ho. In October 2010, Packer spent more than $200 million dollars to increase his shares in Crown Casino.

 

Victor Copeland
Sunday, July 31 , 2011