This past Saturday, the casino at the Ponte 16 resort in Macau suffered a 10-hour suspension of gaming activity after losing power to one of its uninterrupted power supplies. Fortunately, the stoppage didn’t result in any major revenue losses for the company, but now a second casino is reporting that it, too, was without power for several hours on the same day.
GGRAsia reports that it has received confirmation from Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau that the Casino Golden Dragon had to suspend gambling activity for five hours on Saturday for “power-related issues.” The casino is located close to the Macau Maritime Ferry Terminal of Macau’s Outer Harbour area on the peninsula.
Gaming was shut down from 10 AM to 3 PM local time with the bureau, which is known as the DICJ for its Portuguese acronym, explaining to GGRAsia in an email, “On January 19, 2019, apart from a power outage that took place at Ponte 16 casino, Golden Dragon’s casino also had a temporary suspension starting from 10am on that day due to power issues; but operation at Golden Dragon casino had resumed at 3pm on the same day.”
The DICJ added, “The gaming operators need to submit a detailed report to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau to explain the situation when they need a suspension for their gaming equipment or gaming venues. The bureau will then conduct the corresponding review on the matter and ensure all gaming activities are in place legally and fairly.”
It added that it had not uncovered “any abnormal conditions” at either of the two casinos.
GGRAsia reached out to the local power company, CEM, to find out what may have happened, but the CEM only stated, “At the time and place as reported [by DICJ], we did not detect any power outage at the site in question, nor had we received any requests from them [the site operator] for our company’s help.”
Casino Golden Dragon operates under a license held by SJM Holdings. As reported by GGRAsia, the news outlet tried to contact the CEO of Golden Dragon Group, Chan Meng Kam, to learn about the outage, but had not received a response before press time.
