Ukraine’s gambling and lottery commission has denied a casino license to Kyiv’s central Dnipro Hotel over paperwork issues, investigative website Nashi Groshi reported.
It turned out that the new owner of the hotel, Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who bought it from the state for $41 million in July 2020, has been requesting a casino license since December.
The plan to open a casino in the historic hotel contradicts what Kokhanovskyy told the Kyiv Post when he bought the venue. Back then, he said he’d turn it into the first place in Europe dedicated entirely to competitive video gaming.
At the time, Kokhanovskyy was adamant — he was not interested in gambling whatsoever and his hotel would be exclusively a venue for esports.
“It has nothing to do with online casinos or bookmaking. And only people who do not understand this at all can confuse these two things,” Kokhanovskyy said back then.
The gambling market was legalized just before the esports entrepreneur bought the hotel in July 2020. Since then, he has changed his mind over offers to open a casino on the hotel’s premises. There’s been a change of mind, not of the concept, he told the Kyiv Post on April 30.
“The (gambling) market has become absolutely legal, and we have received five really good offers to rent an area within the Dnipro Hotel to open a casino. We’ve decided to do that,” Kokhanovskyy said.
“Meanwhile it’s not changing the concept in any way,” he assured. The hotel he envisioned was supposed to be a venue dedicated to esports, where teams or individuals play against each other for prize money in front of millions of viewers watching online and offline.
He didn’t disclose the name of his potential partners, saying that he’s still negotiating. For now, he plans to submit a new demand for a casino license to the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries.
The commission has already issued 18 licenses for $20 million in total since the beginning of 2021, including to seven high-end hotels in Kyiv such as the Fairmont Hotel overlooking the Dnipro River.
The commission denied the request of the Dnipro Hotel because, in the application, its management wrote a wrong address and gave insufficient information about the space that will be used for slot machines. A hotel must have 300 square meters to open a hall with slot machines.
“Just a few mistakes that should be fixed,” Kokhanovskyy told the Kyiv Post.
Still, Kokhanovskyy will need to invest a lot of money to convert the building into a place for a casino. Under the law, gambling halls are only permitted in five-star hotels, recreation sites outside city limits or gambling buildings approved by the government. The Dnipro Hotel is a four-star hotel.
To open a casino, businesses also have to buy a license valid for five years. Depending on the city and building type, the cost can vary. For example, a five-star hotel in Kyiv with over 150 rooms will have to pay $10.4 million over five years.
Every year, the casino must also pay $30,500 for each game table and over $2,000 for each slot machine.
