Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2008 32 In Focus Winning Friends and Influencing People An insider’s take on how casino junket agents recruit VIP players in China I n September’s edition of Inside Asian Gaming , we offered a look inside the world of Asia’s gambling credit agents. This month a leading figure in the Macau gaming industry explains how the agents identify and then ‘recruit’ high roller players in the first place. Extending gambling credit to VIP players via sub-contracted third-party agents or sub agents, rather than direct from the casino to the player, is a central pillar of the Macau gaming industry. To a lesser extent it is also a feature of some other Asian land- based gambling jurisdictions including the Philippines and Cambodia. The online gambling industry in Asia also uses third- party agents for the provision of credit and collection of debts. The stakes are very high when it comes to recruiting high net worth casino players, because agents and subagents—depending on their place in the junket system pecking order—may be paid either a recruitment fee or take as commission a percentage of the revenue ‘rolled’ by the VIP player over the course of a month, six months or a year. High stakes There arepotentially a lot ofVIPplayers to be recruited in China and a lot of commission to be won. As we reported in IAG last month, a recent study published by investment bank Merrill Lynch in October in association with Capgemini, a business consultancy, estimated there were around 345,000 US dollar millionaires on the Mainland.