Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin SO MUCH WYNNING: Construction is underway for the Wynn Al Marjan Island casino resort, on track to open in 2027. T he gaming authority of the United Arab Emirates just handed Wynn Resorts a second massive win in as many months. After awarding Wynn the first commercial casino license in the emirates in October, the head of the UAE’s General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) said this week that the emirates won’t be holding the door open for other casino operators to flood into the nascent market anytime soon.
“The process has been moving very deliberately here,” Jim Murren, chairman of GCGRA, told attendees of the Skift Global Forum East 2024 on Wednesday. “The government has been very clear they want to have a state of the art, highly compliant, very rigorous regulatory regime to make sure this is going to be world class from a regulatory perspective. Nothing we are doing is going to rush that at all.
” Then Murren uttered what must have been music to Wynn CEO Craig Billings’ ears. “I think you will see other [casino] licenses over time, but we’re focused on the operators we have already licensed and the fact there will be a national lottery here, which we announced earlier this year as well.” Murren mused that other licenses will follow over the “next five to ten years.
” To be clear, the grand total of casino licenses awarded to date in the UAE is exactly one, and the Wynn Al Marjan Isla.
