Melco launched their temporary Cyprus casino on 28 June, which will hold the fort in Cyprus while they build the real deal, City of Dreams Mediterranean, which is set to open in 2021. Local coverage from the Cyprus Mail revealed a mixed view of the opening week from property President Craig Ballantyne, who said that, while they did have 7,000 unique visitors over this first week, the performance was than expected. Ballantyne revealed that many of the visitors were there out of curiosity; apparently, not all visitors were actually sitting down to play.
Ballantyne also acknowledged that the Melco installation is far from the only game in town. There are around thirty casinos in north Cyprus, each one relatively small, but as Ballantyne clarified in the interview, northern Cyprus is controlled by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, so most of these casinos have much looser regulations than the Melco operation in the south. As a result, they can offer free alcohol, free tobacco, and other types of freebies to those sitting down to play.
Ballantyne also mentioned local advertising regulations which permit lottery adverts but prevent other gambling services, such as casinos, from promoting the potential of a “life-changing win” in their advertising. Calling it discriminatory, Ballantyne said that this is something which the industry experiences as a challenging restriction to their marketing strategies.
The country has announced stricter casino regulations in recent years, but these seem only to have applied to southern Cyprus; although the Republic of Cyprus has legal authority over the whole island, in practice the country is split between north and south. Many local sources suggest that these are broadly unenforced, particularly in the north of the country.
Given that Melco’s business plan for Cyprus involves the creation of a fully integrated resort, however, the competitive economics of the whole package will surely look very different upon completion.
