Contributed
Players around the new Roulette game at the Acropolis Gaming Lounge in May Pen, Clarendon, which was opened on Tuesday.
Supreme Ventures Limited, looking to deepen its penetration of the gambling market, has expanded its Acropolis Gaming & Entertainment Centre to the Clarendon capital, May Pen, pumping more than $150 million into its start-up.
The 9,600 square-foot facility, the second to bear the Acropolis brand, opened on Tuesday with 150 machines and boasts a restaurant and bar.
50 new jobs
The investment created 50 jobs, Supreme Ventures vice-president for communications, Sonia Davidson, told the Financial Gleaner.
Lottery games are Supreme Ventures' top money spinner, turning over more than $14 billion last year, but earnings from its gaming rooms - Acropolis and Coral Cliff - are on the rise, topping half a billion dollars in 2006 in a year of meteoric growth for the business segment, which in 2005 only contributed $39 million to group turnover.
Financing for Acropolis May Pen was equity based - a mixture of capital raised under the company's IPO, as well as own cash, Davidson said.
Davidson said the company was not prepared to comment on projected revenues and break-even for the May Pen operation ahead of its year-end financials, but its forerunner in Barbican, Kingston doubling its net wins from US$68,000 to US$108,000 per machine last year, is yet to attain profitability, contributing losses of $110 million to the group last year.
Davidson said the new gaming room, located at Bargain Village Plaza, was not an indication that Acropolis was being built out as a chain, nor are there plans to take the operation overseas.
The company in a statement said, strategically, the move was meant to give Supreme an even bigger presence in the gaming market and to grab market share from a "fast-growing clientele" among Clarendon's 60,000 populace.
Supreme also expects to pull business from the flanking parishes of St. Catherine and Manchester, targeting in the latter case "affluent Mandeville" residents.
lavern.clarke@gleanerjm.com
Source: Financial Gleaner, Friday, November 30, 2007
