In this regular feature in IAG to celebrate 19 years covering the Asian gaming and leisure industry, we look back at our cover story from exactly 10 years ago, “Reimagining Sri Lanka”, to rediscover what was making the news in December 2014!
In recent years, the development flashlight of the Asian gaming industry has shone on Japan and over the past year or so Thailand, but 10 years ago the region’s most interesting emerging markets included Sri Lanka.
Behind the subcontinental nation’s emergence as a regional casino hub was a master-planned entertainment hub at Beira Lake in the capital city of Colombo, where plans were in place to develop three world-class casino resorts including a joint venture project between local casino king Ravi Wijeratne and Australian billionaire James Packer, then controlling shareholder of Crown Resorts.
As IAG explained in our December 2014 cover story, titled “Reimagining Sri Lanka”, the ambitious casino plans – aimed at taking the four existing casinos to a whole new level – were made possible by a proliferation of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects that were transforming the city. These included a new US$292 million, 25.8-kilometer-long Colombo-Katunayake Expressway that had slashed travel times between Colombo and Bandaranaike International Airport from two hours to just 30 minutes, a US$1.3 billion power plant, a mega port and a neighboring port city on 233 hectares of reclaimed land.
Coming at a time when the Sri Lankan government was not only looking to such foreign-investment projects to drive its economy forward but to improve the country’s global tourism appeal, the addition of high-end casino gaming with associated facilities seemed a fait accompli – especially given the lack of sufficient hotel room inventory to satisfy the tourism agenda.
Aside from the Packer-Wijeratne venture, which was to include a 450-room Crown Colombo hotel, the two other projects were linked to Dhammika Perera – the local business mogul who already held three of Sri Lanka’s existing casino licenses – via the 500-room Queensbury casino resort and an expansive US$850 million project in partnership with John Keells Holdings, dubbed Waterfront.
On the Queensbury project, Perera told IAG at the time, “It will be a nice surprise, incorporating luxury and local motifs – we want to create something lasting for the area.”
Sadly, none of those projects came to fruition at that time, snuffed out in 2015 when a new government whose election platform had targeted the Buddhist vote was successfully voted in.
The drama was in many ways a precursor to what we later witnessed in Japan, where a number of potential IR locations – Yokohama being the most notable – withdrew their candidacy upon anti-IR campaigners winning mayoral elections.
But the dream is not over for Sri Lanka, ironically thanks to James Packer’s former partner in Macau, Melco Resorts, which will in 2025 open City of Dreams Sri Lanka at the John Keells property once planned to be called Waterfront and now known as Cinnamon Life. Proof if ever that, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
