Inside Asian Gaming

31 Macau is Asia’s pre-eminent gaming destination and contin- ues widening its lead with an unrivalled rate of growth.The city is the natural stage for the region’s most influential gaming event, G2E Asia, which is expanding this year in line with Macau’s spec- tacular development. Last year’s G2E Asia was limited by the size of the then largest ex- hibition facility available in the city, the Macau Tower Convention & Exhibition Centre.This year, the event moves into the practically limit- less confines of the newly availabe Cotai Strip Convention & Exhibition Center,within Asia’s largest building,TheVenetianMacao-Resort-Hotel. The show portion of G2E Asia 2008 runs June 4-5. There will be at least three times as much floor space for exhibitors this year compared with last year’s inaugural event, say the joint organis- ers,the American Gaming Association (AGA) and Reed Exhibitions. More than 135 exhibitors from 23 countries have signed up for space on the 7,900 sq. m show floor, representing a 75% increase in the number of exhibitors at last year’s show. The exhibitors include:slotmachinemanufacturers;bill and coin validator producers; card sorting and shuffling equipment makers; integration software and interactive gaming suppliers; player and slot tracking experts and table games and accessories manufactur- ers. A full list of exhibitors appears on page 50. Eight-track conference The conference portion of this year’s G2E Asia will be held June 3-5, running a day longer than last year’s conference in order to ac- commodate an expanded list of guest speakers. “By providing an extra day of conference content and a more diversified program, G2E Asia 2008 will provide gaming profes- sionals with increased opportunities to learn from the industry’s leading figures and discover how to maximise their success in the Asian markets,” says Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., president and CEO of the American Gaming Association. The conference will have a new structured track format fea- turing eight tracks, with sessions in each track highlighting a spe- cific area of gaming. This year’s conference tracks include: Asian Markets, Casino Design, Corporate Social Responsibility, Gaming Floor, iGaming, Macau, Marketing, Security & Surveillance, and a Wild Card track featuring“everything else.” The six Asian Markets sessions will not only discuss develop- ments in all the major regional gaming jurisdictions, but also the progress of countries such as Japan,Taiwan and Thailand towards legalizing casinos. Paul Steelman, the brains behind Sands Macao’s highly-suc- cessful stadium-style design, will speak at a seminar titled: Build- ing Excitement: Asian Style and Beyond —one of the two Casino Design sessions. One of the six Macau sessions is VIP Rooms: Behind Closed Doors , which will be moderated by Kareem Jalal, editor and publisher of Inside Asian Gaming .The session aims to provide an insight into the city’s most important but least understood driver of gaming rev- enue. This issue’s cover story, “The Big Squeeze,” highlights some worrying recent developments in Macau’s VIP market. The other conference tracks feature a broad range of topical sessions, highlighting major international developments as well as providing Asia-specific insights. Falling under the Wild Card track, Finding Financing: Asian Gaming Equity will discuss several issues including opportunities for private equity funding and cross border merger and acquisi- tion in the wake of the global credit squeeze. The Best Gets Better Asia’s most important gaming exhibition and conference—G2E Asia 2008—returns to Macau next month in a bigger, more exciting format