Casino bill slammed in Cape Town

Casino owners are against a bill that would allow the relocation of existing facilities.

South Africa.- The Western Cape government has proposed a legislation that would allow the relocation of casinos, but existing facilities are afraid that the implementation could lead to a massive decline in revenue, profits and a significant loss of jobs.

Draft Western Cape Nineteenth Gambling and Racing Amendment Bill, 2018 would permit existing casinos to move to other areas. The existing law established casinos in five of the province’s district municipal regions, and each owner obtained a licence to operate a gambling facility exclusively for 10 years, but the original contract has expired, local media reported.

Anthony Leeming, chief executive of Sun International, explained that the relocations by competitors would negatively impact on GrandWest Casino. “[If the bill was passed into law any of the four licensed outlying casinos will be allowed to apply to the Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board for amendment of their licenses,” he said.

“The amendment, if granted, will permit the respective casino operator to relocate their licensed operations from their existing locations in the outlying areas to the newly established Table Bay and eastern region,” said Leeming, and added that GrandWest Casino could see a gross gambling revenue decline of 24 per cent. 

“The majority of job losses will be from the casino, but a drop in footfall will result in additional and similar job losses in the supporting… operations at GrandWest, as many of these businesses, are entirely dependent on footfall generated by the casino.”

Jacques Booysen, Tsogo Sun chief executive, said: “We have seen the draft legislation and will submit our comments in terms of the process, with comments due by July 31st. We are supportive of the possibility of relocating outlying casinos into the metropole as long as this is done in a manner that makes commercial sense for us.”