Could sports betting give Macau’s beleaguered casino industry a boost?

MGM China’s second property in Macau isn’t set to open on Cotai for another year but MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren is already fretting over how many new gaming tables the property will be allocated by the local government.

MGM Cotai was designed to accommodate 500 gaming tables but expectations are that it might receive only half that number. The two new resorts to open on Cotai this year – Melco Crown Entertainment’s Studio City and Galaxy Entertainment Group’s Phase 2 of Galaxy Macau – had been built to accommodate 400 and 500 tables respectively, yet each received only 250 new tables as the government maintained its adherence to its much maligned gaming table cap.

Murren told the Macau Daily Times that if MGM Cotai was only allowed 250 new tables, “we’d have to move tables from here [its MGM Macau casino on the peninsula] to there. We wouldn’t have enough tables to do everything we would like to do in Cotai, but we would adjust to that. We would make the best of the situation.”