Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2009 20 “We offer returns to player of about 97%, because that’s the way we have promoted it and marketed it,” he states. “The Chinese and other east Asian players understand the return to player available on slots. The popularity of slots is quite surprising though. From all research I’ve done in Macau, it’s very much a live game town. “Having said that, we have the loosest machines in Africa. They’re even looser than the machines of the public gaming companies in southern Africa. The big companies have big volumes and they have a lot of day-trippers that come in to their venues. We actually work in cities that don’t have tourism. “We have [slot] customers that come in every day. The way we have the machines set up is simply giving them longer playing time. If they win big jackpots, we’re quite comfortable with that,” explains Mr Robbins. The company claims the New Africa Hotel and Casino in Dar es Salaam boasts the highest maximums available on gaming machines in the city and that this attracts a high calibre of player. The casino offers 78 gaming machines including eight of Novomatic’s Super V+ Gaminators© linked to a Mega Mystery Jackpot reaching up to US$100,000. It also has other new video slots and video poker machines with three major linked progressive units the company says ensures constant player activity on the gaming floor. In the Malawi market, the company offers wide area progressives as well as other jackpots. “I would say that in Africa the video slots and mystery jackpots are popular because they do work if you’re prepared to put your money into them,” says Mr Robbins. “If, on the other hand, you go to these very new machines and sit there with one coin, you’re not going to do much. But if you go and max your play and have the bankroll to do it, they offer tremendous entertainment and tremendous wins. “I talk to the guys who come in and they sit there, put the machines on automatic, they have their coffee and sandwiches and sit around and chat. It’s great entertainment for them,” states Mr Robbins. Asian gamblers also love sports betting, and KaiRo International has tapped into that market by linking up with the online betting company Ladbrokes.com to offer sports betting at KaiRo’s venues in Accra, Ghana, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. “The gaming boards are very flexible,” says Mr Robbins. “If you come along and say ‘This is a new thing on the market’, as long as they can understand it and police it, they will generally say yes. Anything that is legal in South Africa is legal in our sub-Saharan markets, plus a few other products besides.” T he VIP and mass-market live table games so popular in Macau are only a small part of the mix in sub-Saharan Africa, explains Mr Robbins of KaiRo International. “Our top players have a bankroll of US$50,000 [comparable to the mid-level VIPs who go to NagaWorld in Cambodia]. They don’t want anything in the form of comps. What they want is to play and to be offered a fair game. “In our African venues, the table games are basically American roulette, blackjack and poker. There was also a game of African pontoon, though that’s dying out now.We didhave puntobanco, but that’s died back quite a bit. “We don’t run junkets or have to fly people in. It was different when I was working for Sun International. We used to fly people in from all over the world, including from the Far East, on junkets. That’s obviously an expensive exercise and you have to accommodate the players for four or five days because of the distance. The players are usually men, so you have to cater for their wives Junket-free gaming Outside of southern Africa, the Macau-style VIP gaming model is rare or girlfriends as well, and then make sure the men don’t get distracted and that they spend enough time in the casino. You also have to pay expenses, and provide a certain amount of credit, etc. “The unique thing about Africa outside southern Africa is you don’t really go looking for customers. They come to you. There isn’t much nighttime entertainment. If you want a late night, the only place to go really is a casino. Asians find out from their communities where the place is to go,” he explains. “With our venues, we’re not looking to compete with anyone. We’re looking at a new [business] model where you come in and it’s a slot machine based thing—more of an electronic casino—where the returns are very, very, favourable to the customer. We’re not really looking at hardened gambling. It’s more like entertainment. “In our world, a person with two or three hundred bucks in his pocket is a VIP. That’s the way we train our staff. Our casinos are not very big, but we have big players, in terms of hit frequency and big payouts. In Focus