Inside Asian Gaming hosted its second Super September series at Manila’s Newport World Resorts from 9 to 11 September, comprising welcome networking social Manila After Dark, the IAG Academy Summit and the IAG Academy IR Awards.
IAG’s 2024 Super September kicked off with the return of networking social Manila After Dark, which doubled as the week’s welcome drinks. MAD, as it is popularly known, saw more than 200 guests enjoy a fantastic evening at Spanish-themed Filipino restaurant Casa Buenas at Newport World Resorts.
Attended by everyone from industry suppliers and operators to lawyers, associated industries and a healthy smattering of PAGCOR representatives, the event provided an opportunity for guests to catch up on old times, meet new acquaintances and, for a lucky few, walk away with a bonus prize from our patented lucky draw.
The IAG Academy Summit took place at Hilton Manila, Newport World Resorts, celebrating its second year in 2024 with a notable jump in attendance that highlights how quickly it has become a vital thought leadership platform for the industry. This year’s IAG Academy Summit featured an unparalleled line-up of industry movers and shakers, as evidenced by the gravitas of its two Keynote Speakers: PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco on Day 1 and Newport World Resorts Chairman Kevin Tan on Day 2.
Other notable speakers on the impressive line-up included the likes of Crown Resorts CEO Ciarán Carruthers who took attendees on a journey through the company’s years of hard work to return to suitability in Australia, renowned casino architect Paul Steelman who provided his insights into the Thailand IR opportunity, recently appointed Newport World Resorts CEO Nilo Rodriguez who joined NUSTAR’s Alan Teo to discuss the local Philippine market, and Oudam Khim from the Cambodian gaming regulator.
Panel topics ranged from the use cases of artificial intelligence to the benefits of smart table technology, how to open an integrated resort, the latest updates from industry suppliers and a special Women in Gaming panel where a select group of successful women from across the Philippine gaming industry shared their experiences. Some selected highlights follow:
SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS
REGULATOR’S PANEL: Trouble in Oz
Former South Australian regulator and a key advisor to governments in Macau and Singapore, David Green, issued a warning against moves in Australia to overhaul the gaming industry’s current regulatory structure by way of a national regulator – a body or bodies that would, in theory, replace the current state-based model.
Speaking on the “Voice of the Umpire: Regulator’s Talk” panel at the IAG Academy Summit, Green said any move to centralize the regulation of gaming, be it the land-based casino industry or online sportsbooks, would “unintentionally create some interesting conflicts” – largely due to the issue of how a single body would distribute gaming tax revenues to the states. Under the existing model, he noted, the states are able to “internalise and quarantine that further from federal government reaches” but would have to cede power to the federal government should a new regulatory model be imposed.
Green also pointed to existing tensions between state regulators and their respective law enforcement agencies when it comes to enforcement of gaming laws, particularly in relation to informers that police typically have located in their casinos.
“Those informers are not even known to the management of the casino but there is always a tension between the police as law enforcement and the regulator as the enforcement of gaming law,” he said. “If you were to take a single regulator at a national level trying to deal with eight different police forces over their intelligence assets, you’ve got the recipe for disaster and in my view it is not going to happen.”
Green also warned that increasing taxes being imposed on gaming companies in Australia would likely play into the hands of organized crime, much like the tobacco industry where the imposition of massive taxes on cigarettes has seen the emergence of a thriving black market.
“There is a real danger now that if we keep going down this track, we’re going to see a migration back towards the very thing that was intended not to be a problem, which was the involvement of organized crime and illegal gambling operations,” Green said.
PRESIDENT’S FIRESIDE CHAT: NUSTAR on the rise in Cebu
Alan Teo, Chief Operating Officer of Cebu’s only integrated resort, NUSTAR, said the property was starting to live up to its potential some two years after its soft opening in May 2022.
“When we first started, total visitors into our property on a daily basis was between 1,500 and 2,000 – now it is 5,000 to 6,000,” Teo said. “Revenue-wise that gives a sense of what we have achieved. It is small compared to the overall Philippines market share, but it has been showing a lot of improvement – especially in slots. We’ve seen tremendous growth in slots and coin-in has virtually tripled since opening and continues to grow.”
Although NUSTAR currently has only one of three planned hotels open, with around 360 room keys available, the second luxury hotel, called NUSTAR Hotel, is due to open by the end of this year and will lift the room count to 600. The third, scheduled to launch in 2026, will further lift rooms to around 1,000.
“It’s a phased opening,” Teo explained. “But the retail mall is close to 90% in operation and most of the luxury retailers are there. We have close to 40 F&B outlets that you can find
“By early next year we will have more attractions and entertainment in NUSTAR. We will have the Skydeck, which is a glass floor located on the 36th floor where you can look straight down and will also have the perfect view of the sea and the mountains. Our leisure park will open at the same time. When the third hotel tower is competed two years from now there will be a theater as well.
“We are positioning it as a destination where you spend three to four days in the property rather than just a day or two. As the brand name implies, we want to be the star of Visayas.”
THAILAND AND OTHER GREENFIELDS: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Globally-renowned casino architect Paul Steelman says an integrated resort development in central Bangkok would be too problematic, calling instead for a designated casino zone to be established to create a cluster effect.
“When you put those places together on the same street, a rising tide lifts all boats,” Steelman said in reference to the success of the Macau and Las Vegas models, where IRs are grouped together to create a comprehensive tourism precinct.
“I don’t believe there should be a casino in the center of Bangkok. It’s too crowded, it doesn’t have the infrastructure, it would be difficult to build and take much longer to build, so I think they should be put in some sort of organized fashion.
“I’m a firm believer that the best casinos do [sit on] 35 or 40-hectare sites and can be spread out to make the proper set of conventions, to make a hotel that is phased and is stratified, and to design a casino that’s stratified. Our casinos are designed for five different income groups and that stretches not only to gaming but to the hotel offering, the restaurants and so on.”
Most importantly, however, Steelman said the location of Thailand’s integrated resorts must be chosen with transportation links and ease of connectivity in mind.
“Why does Las Vegas still have the same airport that it had 50 years ago? Because [the casino operators] insisted that we never, ever move it. They want people who are visiting to be in that casino within 20 minutes,” he said.
“Thailand is the same. I firmly believe they have to be greenfield sites somewhere that’s connected to urban transportation and also connected to the airport.”
Veteran consultant David Green added that for Thailand’s first IRs to be successful, it is vital for authorities to articulate a vision for what that success looks like.
“That’s one of the reasons Singapore has been so successful,” he said. “They knew what they wanted, which was relevance – they wanted to upgrade their tourism offering and change their image, and they’ve achieved that.”
HIGHER INTELLIGENCE: The future of AI in the casino industry
It’s true that many operators have not yet fully grasped the best use cases for artificial intelligence on the casino floor, but experts in the field insist the technology will be game changing.
Ian Hughes, Chief Commercial Officer of Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) and CEO of GLI Australia, says AI will be “in every element of the IR from back of house to front of house. Everyone’s going to use some form of development of AI and it’s going to continue to grow in that space to the point where if you’re not adopting it or being aware of it, you’re going to be left at a competitive disadvantage, be it in terms of cost of operations or the value that you’re offering out to your customers.”
Chris Rogers, co-founder of TraffGen Asia, believes avatars and voice models will be the future of AI across the industry, both from a training and a customer-facing perspective.
However, Differential Labs Managing Director Clayton Peister believes marketing will still be at the core of AI – provided the industry improves when it comes to data collection.
“It’s what we can do with that data that is really quite transformative and changes everything, from how we forecast to how we interact with the players,” he said. “It’s when we receive that data that the modeling process really starts, so I don’t think we will get away from building traditional predictive models.
“When it comes to marketing, we will look to take those inputs, craft something that’s unique to the player and then use a corresponding model to make sure that we’re delivering an offer that will drive incremental lift. It really starts with the data in integrating some of this new technology.”
SUPPLIER’S WORLD: The remote gaming opportunity
Industry suppliers expressed mixed feelings over the opportunities the Philippines’ remote gaming segment presents to provide more product to the market.
Remote gaming, part of what the Philippines refers to as the broader eGames segment, has been on the rise since the government gave operators the green light to offer domestic gaming services during COVID.
However, while Light & Wonder’s Ken Jolly described the segment as “fantastic” because it gives players access to real casino games when they cannot travel to a property, Aristocrat’s Lloyd Robson noted that there had been very little expansion by operators since the segment was first introduced three years ago.
“I find it interesting the integrated resorts have not expanded in a streaming sense, but either way the game doesn’t change for us,” Robson explained. “It’s our job to create the world’s best content whether that finds its way onto the physical floor or for streaming or for online.”
David Punter, Operations Manager Sales, Marketing and Service ANZ and APAC for Konami, said it was important that operators and suppliers ensured machines dedicated to remote gaming were in line with those available for play on the casino floor proper.
“It (remote gaming) has been a success story but we need to work on the timing of the product to make sure we add machines in a different section of a casino. We’ve got to make sure the same games are available in the two different spaces as much as possible,” he said.
Jolly noted that the remote gaming concept must be doing something right given that it is now starting to appear in other markets as well, such as Malta, Sri Lanka and Brazil.
One of the highlight events of Super September was the IAG Academy IR Awards, celebrating the best of the best in the gaming industry across the Asia-Pacific region. This year’s awards comprised 22 award categories separated into four divisions: Non-gaming Operator Offerings, Gaming Offerings, Corporate and Industry.
It also incorporated four categories under Inside Asian Gaming’s Hall of Fame, namely Rising Stars (3 winners), Outstanding CEO (1 winner), Industry Icons (3 winners) and Industry Legends (1 winner selected from existing Industry Icons).
The winners were announced at a Gala Dinner on the evening of Tuesday 10 September attended by 240 leading industry representatives, providing a unique opportunity to celebrate the year’s best achievers while enjoying a fine three course meal and networking.
