Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | April 2009 20 not forget that even though Singapore only has 4.5 million residents, it has a very high standard of living and most of them are likely to gamble, they like a little flutter— apart from that local market, I think Malaysia and Indonesia are certainly going to be two of the top markets. Obviously, casinos are banned in Indonesia, and Singapore with direct ferries and direct flights will offer a perfect venue for Indonesians wanting to gamble. With Malaysia as well, people who want a different experience from Genting Resorts World up the mountain might choose Genting Sentosa instead. Rather than going up a mountain to a tropical rainforest, they might go down to the beach. And let’s not forget the Indian market either. Many predict there will be a lot of demand from Indian players, but how realistic is it that large numbers of Indians will come to Singapore to gamble? I think it’s very realistic. I speak to a lot of Indians, and they’re looking forward to the IRs here. I have a good from Delhi, who’s asking me “oh, when will the IRs open?” I think the awareness of the IRs in India is actually quite high. And obviously the flight connections between India and Singapore are quite good. The problem for Indians coming to Macau is how do they get there, and once they get there, there’s not much to do beyond the casinos. The flight connections between India and Singapore are amazing. Obviously, after the Chinese, the Indians are the largest group here. So I think the catchment area for Singapore is going to be large. And let’s face it, the casino offerings in India are quite limited. Roulette is the most popular game at Genting in Malaysia, whereas Macau is dominated by baccarat. What do you see playing out in Singapore? I think it will be a mixture of the Genting Malaysia style and the Macau style. I don’t think it will go to either extreme. I think the Singapore casinos will have much more roulette than the Macau casinos for sure, but more baccarat than in Malaysia. Why is roulette so much bigger in Malaysia? I think it has to do with training of customers really. It’s historical reasons. Genting has been there for such a long time, and when it was opened, it was modelled on the western style casinos, so they put a lot of roulette in there, and people adapted to it. And also, Malaysian culture is slightly different from Chinese culture, so you have a different mentality as well among the Malaysian population. But Singaporean culture is more Chinese culture, isn’t it? Yes, but it’s Peranakan Chinese. Peranakan Chinese are sort of the Malay Straits Chinese, and they’ve had a lot of Western influence over the last 150 years, so they’ve had a lot more international influences and the culture has evolved into its own subset. You can see that with the buildings in Singapore and Malaysia. It’s taken a lot of European influences, and taken some Malays influences. So the Chinese sub-culture here is a different Chinese than the mainland Chinese, or the one that evolved in Macau. Hence we think it’s going to be a lot more roulette. So I guess that bodes well for some of your electronic roulette products? Our new showroom is being constructed now and once we’ve got the MultiPLAY table here, in Singapore, we’re going to invite the two casinos to have a detailed demonstration. It is important our customers have a look at it, to feel it, play it, touch it. The worldwide roll out of MultPLAY has been very successful. We’ve just installed a table at Gold Reef Casino in South Africa. It’s on trial and doing really well. This has been the case pretty much everywhere it’s gone. So we think that Singapore will be a perfect market for this product, because the market here is very sophisticated in terms of electronic gadgets, and they like technology and efficiency. Do you see Macau moving away from its current baccarat dominance towards other games? Not in the immediate future. I think slot machines will slowly start to grow in popularity. I can’t see the table games mix changing in the immediate future. Maybe over the five to ten year period, it might change into a little more blackjack. Talking Heads Touch ID technology in action on TouchTable MultiPLAY Roulette