SkyCity Entertainment Group is eyeing a Manila casino chance but has stepped away from Gold Coast plans.

“We’re staying close for the Philippines and monitoring that space,” mentioned chief executive Nigel Morrison just after SkyCity’s annual outcome last week.

Auckland still generates the largest earnings for SkyCity nevertheless it is casting its net wider, hoping to develop a brand new casino overseas.

Manila Bay has been earmarked for any casino because the Philippines taps into the multibillion-dollar Chinese gambling industry and this year Morrison announced SkyCity’s interest in moving in there, taking the investment neighborhood by surprise.

“We are normally taking a look at approaches to develop the company beyond our existing markets and proactively review new opportunities to create shareholder value,” he mentioned in February. “The Philippines is recognised as one particular on the most fascinating new emerging gaming markets in Asia.”

He stated senior SkyCity executives had visited the Philippines a lot of instances and “believe within the prospective for future growth”.

However it isn’t identified just how SkyCity plans to move there, and particularly whether or not it will be within a consortium arrangement.

In March, Bloomberg reported around the opening of billionaire Enrique Razon’s US$1.2 billion ($1.48 billion) Solaire Manila casino in Manila. It features a monopoly within the city “until the country’s richest man, Henry Sy, opens a venture there in 2014″.

The billionaires are investing in casinos because the Southeast Asian nation seeks to emulate the success of Macau, where gamblers from China’s mainland fuelled a 14 per cent income surge to a record $38 billion final year. New resorts could assistance the Philippines’ gaming market expand fivefold to $10 billion by 2017, its chief regulator estimates, as outlined by Bloomberg.

“Razon’s venture is closely watched because it can prove when the Philippines can get a larger share of junket and VIP marketplace in Asia,” mentioned Allan Yu, who helps to manage about $11 billion at Metropolitan Bank & Trust. “It’s very promising and it looks like it’s going to take off.”

A venture of Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada and a fourth casino in the Manila complex by Philippine billionaire Andrew Tan and Genting Hong Kong are tipped to open between 2015 and 2016.

Morrison told final Wednesday’s Auckland briefing how Gold Coast plans had been ditched.

In Australia, SkyCity was inside the Azure Consortium with Brookfield Multiplex, vying for the right to create a casino along with wider entertainment and tourism facilities including a cruise ship terminal in Queensland, he said.

But authorities were unable to confirm whether a casino would be part of your wider cruise ship terminal.

“So we have withdrawn on that basis, if we can’t get certainty that there is going to be a casino in that space.”

The Gold Coast already has Jupiters Hotel and Casino at Broadbeach.