Inside Asian Gaming

September 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 31 T o illustrate the solid fundamentals of the business, Joe Pisano offers some figures on the Philippines, which is not new to the slots industry and where US- approved class one machines have been in the market for nearly three decades. “The Philippines has had class one machines for 27 years now,”he explains. “It’s a mature market but a severely under-serviced one. It has 100 million people and only 7,500 machines.” That ratio of one gaming machine per 13,333 people suggests significant room for growth. In a developing country such as the Philippines, says Mr Pisano, the turnkey slot floor is a great way of introducing gaming at a modest consumer price point to mass-market players quickly without incurring the huge capital costs of the Las Vegas-style resorts seen in Macau. “We opened a new property in Cotabato City on Mindanao in the Philippines. It’s an area that’s never had gaming before,” says Mr Pisano. “We went with the regular Manila mix, which is linked games, slots, a little bit of multi-player. After one week the owner called us and said people are queuing up to play baccarat. “We have baccarat machines from Jumbo Technology down there, in six- seater format. The venue owner asked us to expand the bank, because people were actually sitting waiting to get on the existing machines.” The message, suggests Mr Pisano, is that the turnkey model is ideal for under serviced markets because it can be installed quickly and then can be tweaked quickly to suit very local needs. In Macau, mass market play in its table and slot form often seems like a poor relation to VIP play when it is discussed in earnings conference calls. Yet mass-market players are in effect helping to subsidise low margin, high volume VIP play. The higher margin on mass play in Macau is pro rata making a greater contribution to return on capital investment than VIP play. In less mature gaming jurisdictions such as the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam,the mass player is arguably being courted and catered to more carefully than in Macau. “In the Philippines players generally prefer linked games,” explains Mr Pisano. “In Cambodia, roulette is king. If you look at your floor layouts,in the Philippines it might be 10% slots and 90%multiplayer. In Cambodia it would be 50% multiplayer and 50% slots.” The company says it is using a Progressive Gaming International Corp. product called Casinolink® Analytics to monitor floor and machine performance. “It’saprogramthatsitsonourdesktops. It gives a daily product comparison across the region and has a graphical interface so that we can see trends and what games people are playing and how they are playing them,” explains Mr Pisano. “In properties where our systems are installedwe have data coming in on a daily basis so we can monitor it and see where we need to mix things. The nice thing about being across several markets, is that if a product doesn’t work in one market it doesn’t cost much to put it in a container and ship it to somewhere it will.” Beyond Macau Most of Asia is under-serviced and eager for gaming, says Elixir Here and elsewhere: The newly opened PAGCOR Club Estosan Garden in Cotabato City, the Philippines