Inside Asian Gaming

April 2016 inside asian gaming 7 Cover Story to Beijing than to Hawaii. That led some to believe US regulations on money laundering wouldn’t apply in Saipan but US$78 million in fines levied last year against CNMI’s Tinian Dynasty casino, upheld in court, confirmed US regulatory reach. Best Sunshine is working with CNMI’s newly formed Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) to forge groundbreaking rules to make Macau practices, including VIP profit share, compatible with US law. Since joining Best Sunshine in November 2014, Mr Brown – the Las Vegas Sands Macau president who opened Venetian Macao and an alumnus of Trump Casinos in Atlantic City, Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas and NagaCorp in Cambodia – has acquired land in Garapan, Saipan’s tourist heart, to build Grand Mariana, a Paul Steelman designed casino hotel scheduled to open late this year. He made a partnership deal with Japan’s Kan Pacific for the site of its aging Mariana Resort, a massive 161 hectare (398 acre) plot that the government will offer to lease for 40 years into 2058 next month. Perhaps most stunning, Mr Brown opened Best Sunshine Live, a temporary casino in Garapan’s DFS T Galleria mall, with 34 mass tables, 12 VIP tables and 106 slot machines. For 2015, with the casino open just over five months with only two months of full operations including VIP play, Best Sunshine reported gaming revenue of HK$707 million (US$91.2 million) and adjusted EBITDA of HK$121 million. November through February monthly VIP roll averaged US$1.82 billion. In his Saipan office, Mr Brown updated Editor at Large Muhammad Cohen on his progress in America’s Pacific frontier. The beachfront piece is modeled after the One and Only resort in Dubai. This will open up at the end of this year, call it New Year’s Eve grand opening …The hotel block will continue to be built and will open in the first quarter of 2017, call it April for full building opening. Now that’s building one, and I look at that as a beautiful Sands [Macao].