Inside Asian Gaming

May 2014 inside asian gaming 11 A s SandsMacao employees began arriving for work around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, 18th May, 2004, a crowd was already forming on the street, nine hours before the casino’s scheduled grand opening. Around noon, a rumor spread that guests would receive free chips worth MOP200 (US$25), swelling the crowd. Just before 2 p.m., during a reception for invited guests, security began “freaking out,” according to an executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp. sent from Las Vegas for the opening. LVS Executive Vice President Brad Stone slipped down the escalator from the second-level casino to the lobby and saw thousands of people had surged past barricades and were pressed against the glass entrance doors. Security feared that people would be crushed, hardly the ideal opening day headline for Macau’s first American-operated casino. “Open the doors now!” Mr Stone yelled. “I want these doors open now!” But the doors were designed to swing outward, a physical impossibility with the crowd pressed against them. The only option was to yank the doors inward and snap them off their hinges. Guards began pulling furiously on the doors. People outside saw what was happening and joined in. In all, 16 doors were smashed and shoved aside to let people enter Sands Macao, putting conventional ribbon- cuttings to shame. The crowd surged toward the escalator and within minutes, the overburdened machine halted and bodies lurched backward. People at the bottom of the escalator tumbled like bowling pins. “I remember the head of security, this big Australian guy, trying to stop people from getting on and help the ones coming down,” a Macau resident in the crowd recalls. “He looked like a superhero, this big gweilo [Westerner] trying to catch these little Chinese people.” Despite those hiccups, 40,000 people visited Sands Macao on opening day, nearly triple its official capacity, marveling at the Paul Steelman-designed interior with high ceilings above 277 table games and 405 slot machines and enjoying the entertainment right there on the bright casino floor while employees dispensed tea, cards and HK$100 chips with smiles rather than scowls. “This was a must-see event that had last happened in 1970 when Lisboa opened,” longtime University of Macau gaming law professor Jorge Godinho says. “We have the opportunity to learn from one another,” Stanley Ho, who built the Lisboa and held Macau’s gaming monopoly for 40 years, told reporters at the Sands opening behind a broad grin. “The cake is going to be bigger and bigger, and we all could have a share.” But privately he had a different reaction. “When Stanley Ho went up the escalator and saw the Sands gaming floor, his jaw dropped,” a witness recalls. After leaving, Mr Ho reportedly summoned his inner circle and demanded action: “We are Chinese, and we will not be disgraced. We will not lose to intruders.” Eventually, the gawking guests began to gamble. Even though Sands Macao had no regular junkets, no hotel rooms, no shows and its six restaurants, including the longest buffet in Macau, bled money, the 1 million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) complex earned back its entire US$265 million construction cost within nine months. Mass Awakening “We woke up the world to Asian gaming,” a former LVS executive who requested anonymity says. “Sands Macao proved the value and profitability of mass gaming.” From gross gaming revenue of US$3.6 billion in 2003, the final year of the casino monopoly, revenue rose to $5.2 billion in 2004, passed Las Vegas in 2006 and hit $45.2 billion last year, seven times Las Vegas Strip gaming revenue. “Sands Macao proved mass-market gaming had huge potential,” University of Macau associate business economics professor Ricardo Siu Chi Sen says. “Catering to mass-market players changed the traditional gaming business model here.” “Sands Macao’s impact was huge. It was the thing that transformed the gaming industry in Macau. Before that, the casinos were fairly sleazy and didn’t have any razzamatazz. Sands brought the Las Vegas buzz to Macau,” Spectrum Asia CEO Paul Bromberg says. “Mixing American culture with Chinese was totally a new concept,” says Platinum Ltd Managing Director Mary Mendoza, who worked for LVS in marketing when Sands Macao opened. The Macau native says dozens of players became millionaires through Sands’ rewards program, another new concept for the market, and highlights the strategic decision to use simplified Chinese signage favored by mainlanders. Crowds continue flocking to the openings of new Sands properties in Macau. Stanley Ho at the opening day of Sands Macao on 18th May, 2004. Cover Story