Today, I took the pleasure of immersing myself into the world of casino accounting, which was quite a new experience for me and rather strange which left me with many questions.
The Dragonara Casino (Dragonara Gaming Ltd.) is the leading casino in Malta in terms of revenues and profits and is larger than the Tumas Group’s casino (Tumas Gaming) at Portomaso. One of the things that I could not understand in Dragonara’s accounts is the large discrepancy between the bets made at the casino, marked at ย321,608,173, and the gross revenue which stands at around ย19,880,550.
If the discrepancy is uncollected revenue, that is players who are in debt with the casino, that’s quite huge and rather realistic by my own imagination because I can’t understand how a casino would allow you to bet with money you don’t have. In theory, I would assume that the casino would retain more than half of the funds of the amount that have been wagered because most people would lose most of their money wagered. Correct me if I am wrong. I may be missing something here, though, or misunderstanding something.
The company’s performance can be compared with Tumas Group’s casino at Portomaso to have a more general view of the business, but the Tumas Gaming accounts don’t make mention of the amount that was wagered.
Taking a brief look at the income and expenditure statement, I would say the operating profit margin is much lower than what I would have imagined for a casino but it still makes a good profit. They also pay a significant tax to the Malta Gaming Authority.
They also received considerable amounts of subsidies from the government as part of the Covid pandemic subsidies.
Note that these are only the accounts for the operations of the casino, excluding the catering activity which is registered under a different company. It also doesn’t include the potential income made by other gaming companies that make use of the premises but are not part of the casino (online games and betting).
The Dragonara business empire as run by Johann Schembri is also a bit opaque with various companies layered together and the ultimate ownership of the companies hidden further with holding companies. The ultimate parent company of Dragonara Gaming that runs the casino is IZI Group.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply