Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (IPI) expects to lose less money than usual in the first half of 2020, mainly because it hasn’t had many gamblers to rack up unpaid markers.

On Tuesday, IPI informed investors that it expects to book a net loss for the six months ending June 30 but that this loss would be “not less than 50%” below the US$239.7m in red ink the company reported in H1 2019. So, er, hooray.

Like most casino operators around the world, IPI’s Imperial Palace venue was forced to close in mid-March due to COVID-19. That means IPI welcomed fewer VIP gamblers in H1 2020 than the previous year, and the expected decrease in net losses “is mainly attributable to the reduction in impairment losses” for bad loans made to said VIPs.   

Unlike most Asia-Pacific casinos, IPI infamously opted to avoid junket operators in favor of a direct-loan strategy to its VIPs. This was supposed to offer IPI a greater share of VIP gambling losses but ultimately resulted in IPI being unable to collect on those losses, which routinely amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.