It might be the beginning of a new streak of gross gaming revenue (GGR) increases for South Korean casino operator Paradise Co Ltd. The operator reported a return to growth with a 49.5% increase in April, reports GGRAsia.
That number turns out to be KRW57.13 billion ($48.5 million) in GGR, a healthy improvement from the KRW38.21 billion ($32 million) last April.
A bulk of that increase came from table revenue. It increased 50.8% to a total of KRW53.53 billion ($45 million), from KRW35.49 billion ($30 million) in April 2018. Machine table also increased 32.5%, but made up a much smaller portion of total GGR. It went from KRW3.61 billion ($3.1 million), from KRW2.72 billion ($2.3 million) in the prior-year period.
For the year so far, Paradise Co is doing very well. Aggregate casino revenue is reported to be up 17.2% Like April’s numbers, that’s mostly off the back of table games, with machine games making up a percentage of the total gross.
They also reported on table drop, or the amount of money exchange for chips at the table. That number is up for the year of 2019 so far by 23.1%, with KRW2.24 trillion ($1.9 billion) exchanged.
The positive gross for April is a rebound for Paradise Co. They saw a fairly small decline in GGR in March, when it was 0.9% lower than it had been in 2018, possibly missing out on an increase due to a fire in late March. February was much kinder with a 28.5% increase.
Paradise Co is looking like the strongest player in the South Korean market at the moment, with three of the first four months of the year showing growth. They’ve also locked up a Chinese tourism deal, vital to the Korean industry that only allows them foreign tourists as customers. That should bring in plenty more mass market players to keep the tables full, and hopefully bring up machine games a bit more.
Long term, Paradise Co is still considering its options in an attempt to win a very competitive Japanese integrated resort license.
