Public Hearing Announced for Entertainment Complex Bill Amid Controversy
February 28, 2025Public Hearing Announced for Entertainment Complex Bill Amid Controversy
February 28, 2025Winna Media Blog
3 April, 2025
Legalising Thailand’s casinos
Moving forward; sort of anyway.
At the end of March, the Thai cabinet approved a draft law to legalise casinos.
As Winna Media’s newly released White Paper, Thai Entertainment Complex Market Status Report, makes clear, the Thai cabinet’s approval has given the draft legislation the impetus it needed to proceed to the next stages of approval. But at the same time, it also raises three questions:
How long will that take? What will the EC framework look like by then? And what combination of the many local, regional and international players will be actively involved if and when the draft legislation becomes law?
So, how positive you feel right now depends on where you stand, who you’re standing with, and how long you want to stand around.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said the draft bill will be reviewed by the Thai parliament, the senate and then the king and that its terms could change during the process.
On top of the legislative timetable, ongoing protests by social and religious groups could “mean that the process, one way or the other, will run to the end of 2025 or, at worst, the end of 2026,” according to the White Paper.
Right now, only Thais who can prove they’ve got $1.5m at least on deposit will be able to play in the casinos built on their own soil. Casinos can only occupy 10% of any EC’s space. If these factors don’t change, how negative will that be?
Consider that only 10,000 Thais have that kind of money. And, what’s clear from the White Paper is that a number of estimates about annual revenues from the ECs have assumed a much, much higher volume of local people would visit.
Thailand welcomed 35m visitors in 2024, and the White Paper notes, “Backpackers and family tourists are seldom optimal target markets for integrated resorts.” It adds that the Chinese mass market is terrified of visiting Thailand because of media coverage of PRC citizens kidnapped and enslaved in scam complexes.
Even the announcement of the four cities where the ECs will be built comes with a health warning. The impact of soil contamination, community protests, the effect on existing tourist demographics, local culture, flora and fauna and siting ECs on Thailand’s borders with Myanmar and Cambodia could each delay their rollout – or worse. And that’s not even taking the turbulence of 2025 geo-politics into the calculations.
The complex and shifting relationships and alliances between would-be, wannabe and will-almost-certainly-be players form the core of the White Paper. It notes that “All major gaming operators are active in Thailand,” and how the biggest regional and international players are increasingly in partnership with quasi-Thai government organisations and/or are bulwarked by support from business leaders across Southeast Asia.
On top of that, the international players are keeping close, supporting the EC legislation in their public pronouncements and covertly and overtly opening offices in Thailand to stay close to developments. And you overlook the Thai companies at your peril. “It goes without saying that Thai companies will be the dominant driving force through being the majority shareholders of any EC. However, they are less likely to show their cards because they know everyone must come to them…”