Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming April 2016 8 Cover Story About the size of San Francisco, Saipan is the largest island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, a US Pacific possession 2,000 kilometers (1,260 miles) from Tokyo and 2,900 kilometers from Shanghai. While casino gaming is new to Saipan, CNMI islands Tinian and Rota began licensing casinos in the 1990s. Rota’s casino closed within weeks of opening. Tinian Dynasty, after incurring fines for violating anti-money regulations last June, has mainly been closed since. Other groups holding casino licenses on those two islands sporadically rumble about moving ahead. Each island has its own gaming commission and tax regime. On Saipan, Best Sunshine pays a $15 million annual licensing fee plus 5% gross receipts tax on all revenue, including gaming win. Just ahead of casino legalization, Saipan authorized slot clubs, and three have opened in island hotels. The largest, Club C in Kanoa Resort, with Macau’s IGamiX as management operator, has 140 gaming positions, a restaurant, bar and nightly entertainment. Ubiquitous poker machines cater to locals, and, unlike penny slots in other gaming venues, minimum bets are US$0.25. America’s Far East Coast IAG: With Best Sunshine, it’s impossible to ignore that big number, US$7.1 billion. It’s especially difficult since you’re talking about an island with 50,000 people and half a million annual tourist arrivals that’s four hours from anywhere. Not just US$7.1 billion, but the proposed 4,252 rooms, 300 villas, 1,600 gaming tables and 3,500 slot machines: what makes those numbers right for Best Sunshine and Saipan? Mark Brown: I’ve heard the US$7 billion number. Our plan is actually more than that. I take a step back as I’m talking to investors. Look at what we’ve done from the temporary facility, generating these numbers with a small number of tables inside a shopping mall in Saipan. That’s step one. We are building and got approval in full for a US$500-to-600 million property across the street, Grand Mariana, which will have between 400 and 500 slot machines, about 250 to 300 table games and 374 suites. 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, basically the casino block, beach front, mass gaming floor, junket rooms, ballroom and restaurants. 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]. The second one is our big property, which will be roughly 1,000 rooms, roughly cost US$1 billion. So property one, property two, anywhere between a billion-five and two billion, that’s how we are looking at it. We are going for the RFP [Request for Proposal] in May for the parcel of land. IAG: That’s Kan Pacific’s Mariana Resort site? MB: Correct. We have a full blown plan for that site. But my point is that US$7 billion dollars is a plus-plus-plus. It is an investment from our company, but it doesn’t have to all come from us. We can have partners joining us from other gaming companies, hotel companies. It’s US$7 billion worth of investments. I keep saying, we’re going to spend and invest more than that. But it’s not a US$7 billion building that we are building on Saipan – and that’s how it’s been written – Grand Mariana, US$7 billion property. No, we are not building City Center [MGM’s US$9 billion Las Vegas project] right out of the gate. … we plan on having 20 buildings. The site is huge. That’s a city, our version of the Cotai Strip with 11 hotels and nine casinos, villas and homes and condos, the largest water park in the world, shopping. It’s an astounding site.