UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Te United Arab Emirates is a significant market. It's probably the biggest market opening for commercial gaming in a very long time. And it's moving very quickly. Tere's been a lot of scepticism given that UAE is a Muslim country and the fact that gaming is against Sharia law, but there’s been enough progress to believe that it's happening. And it's a very big opportunity.
Te combination of three Integrated Resorts in the UAE, one at Al Marjan Island in Ras Alhaimah, the second in Dubai and the third in Abu Dhabi, could produce as much as US$8.6bn in annual gaming revenue according to gaming advisory firm CBRE Institutional Research. Significantly more than the $8.4bn in gaming revenue produced in 2023 by the 25 properties that make up a major portion of the Las Vegas Strip, and the $5.25bn generated by Singapore’s casinos resorts in the same period.
Te UAE is a larger economy than Singapore, but it’s often compared against Singapore in terms of casino development. It's a reasonable comparison. Singapore generates around $5.2bn of annual casino-related GGR. It's a smaller population base, and smaller economy, but it benefits from its proximity to China. In comparison, the UAE stacks up against Singapore in terms of a tourism destination, with the underlying assumption that with enough gaming capacity, UAE should be
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a larger casino market than Singapore. It's a US$500bn GDP market with almost 10 million residents. Gaming will remain off-limits for Emiratis, but what's interesting is that most of the population is expat. About 81 per cent of the population in fact, who hail from the US, Canada, UK, Russia, India, Pakistan etc. So there's a significant local population for casinos.
In addition, UAE has around 25 million international visitors and has a current capacity of over 200,000 hotel rooms in the market. If you look at the tourism and leisure spend per visitor, it's among the highest in the world. It's even larger than Singapore and Las Vegas, which is telling in this case as both Singapore and Las Vegas already have casinos. So there's reason to be excited about the opportunity for commercial gaming in UAE given how much people currently spend when they travel to the UAE.
What happens to the visitation after a major integrated resort
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