Inside Asian Gaming

April 2009 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 11 Cover Story T o understand how poker in Macau has come to a marketing crossroads, it’s worth examining how the land-based casino game has typically been marketed internationally since the advent of the commercially available Internet around 15 years ago. The business model adopted by the service providers in Macau is essentially the one imported from North American and European poker markets. Under this system, online poker rooms are used to feed players to land-based casino games, and the land-based games (through affiliation or other business links with the online providers) provide the high profile prizes and glamour that help to nurture and further develop the market. Partnerships In Macau some operators have both opted to go with third party partners allied to online poker rooms (PokerStars.net and the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, in the case of SJM’s Grand Lisboa, and AsianLogic and its Asian Poker Tour, in the case of Galaxy StarWorld). The APT has a stable of online partners including iPoker, TITANPOKER, Dafapoker and Everest Poker to provide players for APT events. The APT recently announced it has been given approval by Macau’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, to expand the Macau leg of its tournament from six days to 12. TheAPTMacauFestival will run from12th to 23rd August at the Galaxy StarWorld Hotel and Casino. The buy-in is set at US$4,300 (US$4000+300).The organisers add they will also offer high-limit games and ‘sit-n- go tables’ during the festival, hinting they will up the ante on last year’s HK$1 million (US$129,000) high rollers game. The APPT, meanwhile, in concert with its online partner PokerStars.net, is offering a guaranteed prize pool for its main event on the Macau leg of the 2009 tour of US$1.62 million. The APPT Macau, held at the Grand Waldo Casino from 1st to 9th September, will have a buy in for the main event of HK$25,000 (around US$3,000). The top prize for the High Rollers event will be just under US$500,000. Wynn Macau has gone for a different poker room business model from SJM and Galaxy. It has built on its wide experience of the game at Wynn Las Vegas to produce an in-house poker room, rather than using third party promoters. While this means Wynn can benefit directly from poker’s favourable margins in Macau rather than going for the safety route of guaranteed monthly income, it puts a great onus on Wynn’smarketingoperationtofillthetables seven days a week. Marketing information displayed on Wynn Macau’s website about its Macau poker room is limited, but if it follows the Las Vegas model, players can expect daily no limit Texas Hold’em prize games and regular tournaments along the lines of the popular Wynn Classic events. Under attack A potential weakness of a poker- marketing model that relies on the online sector supplying players for the bricks and mortar sector is that online gambling businesses can be vulnerable to hostile regulatory action. By contrast, this sort of thing rarely happens to land-based gaming establishments. If a jurisdiction has gone to the time and trouble of licensing a bricks andmortar casino then (Cambodia and one or two other rackety markets aside) it’s a pretty safe bet that the authorities consider the establishment is here to stay and that there’s a worthwhile trade-off in terms of tax dollars. Governments get grumpy with online bettingbusinesses because they’re a lot harder to control in terms of regulation lobby can come up with some equally creatively obtuse campaign. TheMacaupokermarketisundoubtedly too small currently to warrant the kind of left field, high cost, high profile advertising and marketing campaign mounted by SJM for Grand Lisboa and its other properties. But Macau poker room operators could certainly benefit from connecting directly with the social poker movement. Then the rooms could develop as truly local 24-hour seven days per week attractions rather than as loss leaders and temporary homes for the visiting international circus of the various poker tours. By carefully targeting desirable demographic groups, online poker rooms might also be able to create new revenue streams by doing deals with marketing companies that want to sell other goods and services to this affluent urban clientele. “In Hong Kong, hundreds—possibly thousands—of players meet in restaurants on Friday nights to play in cashless games” Poker at the crossroads One size may not fit all when it comes to marketing the game in Greater China