Singapore introduced new casino entry restrictions

Monday, October 15, 2012

Singapore introduced new casino entry restrictions

As you may know, Singapore has two casinos, Marina Bay Sands and Resort World Sentosa in the past few years. Although they are supposedly meant for tourists, many residents visit and many are also addicted to gambling there. According to Singapore media, Singaporeans and Singapore permanent residents paid a total of $288 million in casino levies in just 18 months (2011 and the first six months of 2012). If you take $100 as the cost of entry to casino by residents, it makes $2.88 million visits in 18 months (Actually many visits cost less because there is a $2,000 yearly pass so number of visits is much higher. I do not know any other attraction this much popular in Singapore!

Just after the news were out, the government has started this casino control ruling review. Some proposed changes were limiting the number of visits to casino and limiting jobless to enter the casinos at all. And today the Singapore media announced that new rules governing the two casinos in Singapore were introduced in Parliament today:

"NEW rules governing the two casinos here were introduced in Parliament on Monday, including one to limit how many times a person who is "financially vulnerable" can visit the casinos. This first step in amending the law on casinos comes after a month-long consultation on various proposed changes to the Casino Control Act.

Another change is the setting up an evaluation panel to assess the overall performance of the resorts, to ensure that Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa constantly develop and promote their non-gaming components to remain attractive to tourists."[2]