Government opens tender for Estoril, Lisbon and Figueira casinos
The game areas of Estoril and Figueira da Foz are finally going to an international public tender. The government is preparing to publish the competing procedures in the coming weeks, probably as early as June. The concessions for the game rooms in Estoril and Lisbon, operated by Estoril Sol, and in Figueira da Foz, owned by Amorim Turismo, did not end at the end of 2020, but the pandemic prevented the launch of contests and their harmful effects on the tourism sector. game of chance ended up by the Executive’s deadline to extend this deadline December 31 year. Now, the process will really follow and it will have to be fast. The concessionaires offered are on top of the game and present proposals. There are doubts that the contest is interested in international players.
related
For now, “there are the last pieces of the pieces for the launch of the DN procedures established for tender”, advanced the Ministry of Economy and Sea Live. The contracted term, chosen by António Silva, advanced the conclusion of the process, confirming that it has “in view of the public tender, of new concessionaires”. Everything points to the contests being useful for weeks. The sector says it has no room for delays and that the government should publish the announcement in June. “It’s a very tight deadline”, stresses a source still pending the deal, remembering that it may happen that there are “illegal problems and decided to challenge the tender”, delaying the bidding. Before the outbreak of a pandemic, the then Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, had almost completed it, but the unexpected process of the crisis left everything in the drawer.
For now, the rules of the game are in the secret of António Costa Silva’s office. Without lifting any veil, he made it known that “the terms and conditions are included in the tender specifications and programs of the correspondents, which will be the object of a public contract under the terms provided for in the Public Contracts Code”. But the sector is calm, not least because the last two years have been marked by historic drops in gambling revenues, as a result of confinements, opening hours and reduced capacity for health and surrounding recipes.
Industry revenues
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One of the concerns is with the initial counterpart. As the industry source asks, will the State, which has a monopoly on gambling, “define a country by the concession or will it opt for a kind of auction?”. At this point, the operators emphasize that “the casinos to be a business”. “In these, casinos’ revenues fell by almost 60% and, on the other hand, in online gambling they showed a growth above 60%.
In terms of taxation, there is another thorn in the side of concessionaires. It is called minimum revenue and is based on the payment of an annual word to the State, which presupposes a growth in gross gaming income of 2% per year – in the case of the Estoril and Lisbon casinos, of 2.6%. There is much to put, as attributed, the revision of this tax, having even reached the State in court of the shortfalls registered since the beginning of the 2008 crisis. In summary, they defended that taxes exceed revenues. With the opening of a new tender, they want to see this issue clarified. In 2020 and 2021, Portuguese casinos were owed to this payment due to the health crisis in the activity.
The term of future concessions is also unknown. The State tenders (or 1 tenders99 of the latest tenders) were known well in advance, which the previous tenders prepared for the proposals to attend the previous 99 and the last ones established for their proposals. In 2001, the government opted to proceed with the extension of the oldest concessions for a period of 15 years, even though the exploration periods had not expired. This time, and even because of commitments made with the European Union, the tender has to be launched. The Estoril Sol group has already made a report and accounts for 2021 that it intends to bid for the new concession. Amorim Turismo’s will is unknown, but it is foreseeable that it will go to the game. Contests can also arouse the curiosity of international players, but given the evolution of the business in recent years, many expressions of interest are not foreseeable.
In 2025, the deadline for operating the casinos in Póvoa de Varzim (operated by the Estoril Sol group), Espinho and the three in the Algarve (the latter under concession to the Solverde group) ends. Troia and Chaves casinos, on the other hand, have termination data scheduled for December 31, 2032.
ACCOUNTS
pandemic shake
Last year, casinos operating in Portugal recorded a 55% drop in gaming revenues compared to 2019. and fell to 141.7 in 2021.
far from recovery
In the first quarter of this year, casino revenues reached 53.3 million euros, an increase of 858% compared to the same period in 2021. However, compared to the first three months of 2019, the business showed a decrease of 28%. The most recent figures confirm that the activity remains a long way from reform. From the beginning of 2022 and until the first days of May, the variation varies between the 20 breaks of 30%, and the game rooms, taking into account the same period of 2019.