Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | May 2009 26 As we reported in our story ‘Out of Africa’ in February, however, Chinese and other East Asian players are increasingly coming to understand the value proposition of slots and the favourable returns to player available. That is likely to stimulate the increased penetration of player cards, privilege clubs and other promotional and marketing techniques. And at a time when the Asian premium table market appears generally to be subject to a squeeze caused by regional economic contraction and a reduction in available credit, operators with properties in Asia are renewing their efforts to build their slot markets. MPEL’s Mocha Clubs, a chain of slot venues in Macau catering mainly for local players, has been a leader in building a base of loyal slot customers in that market. The whole of the second floor at Mocha Marina Plaza Slot Lounge for example is dedicated to VIP players under the branding ‘Royal Lounge’. In Macau locals can visit slot clubs or casinos on a casual basis any time. It may be easier therefore to build loyalty within that customer group than it is among Mainland Chinese visitors, who must come to Macau either in organised groups or by applying for personal travel permits under China’s Individual Visit Scheme. Nonetheless the rewards to those operators that are successful in building their slot player data base among players in Macau are likely to be significant. The cash turnover generated by a slot VIP is not on the same level as that produced by a table VIP—the equivalent typically of a few hundred US dollars per session, rather than the thousands or tens of thousands of US dollars common among premium table players. Pro rata, though, the slot VIP business typically has more profit potential because it has scale in terms of a bigger demographic and the trade doesn’t depend on casinos paying commissions to junket agents in return for feeding them players. Bally Technologies T om Doyle, Vice President Product Management for Bally Technologies Inc., was in Macau recentlywith a team of colleagues to explain the work the company is doing in systems development to support Asia’s growing slot market. He outlined some of the enhanced functionality of Bally Slot Data System (SDS) in its latest format (known as version 11) when he spoke at the latest Bally Asia- Pacific User Conference at The Venetian Macao. “Bally SDS as a platform has been around as a long time, and has deep functionality, but we’re committed to constantly modernising and upgrading it,” says Mr Doyle. “We have taken it into a world where it now operates as a Windows-based solution, with click, drag and drop, drop-down screens, and functionality in the reports that make it easier to use and make it exceptionally user-friendly. “Bally SDS is a product with a lot of history and a lot of in-built redundancy in the system, so in the unlikely event that the system does go down, it’s going to be for a very short time. We’ve created an updated product that not only operates in that environment, but Tom Doyle in high-speed networks and in both Windows and Unix platforms. It’s one of the first systems that we’ve taken into a multi-platform environment in casinos,” he explains. “What we have at Bally’s product development centre in India are 500-600 programmers, along with another 100-plus people that run the administration side of our business. It means we have been able to take things to a whole new level—way beyond where we could have imagined if we tried to do it with more limited resources. We are very excited about Bally SDS today, and we’re very excited about where Bally SDS is going.” “As well as Bally SDS’s flexibility when it comes to working alongside a casino’s existing technology, Bally SDS 11 has a significantly enhanced level of functionality compared to the previous generations of the system”, says Mr Doyle. “Some of the features of Bally SDS 11 really help cater not only to the regular customer but to the higher level customer. We have done things for example with consolidated reporting and higher limit pay outs,” he explains. “Also if people want to go into a casino and they want to reserve a [slot] game for a while, we’ve added a game reserving feature in our level 11 products. It’s very very popular for example in casinos where there’s been an imposition of a smoking ban. Somebody can go out and take a smoking break and keep his or her machine so somebody else doesn’t play it,” he explains. Although smoking is allowed in Macau casinos, the Bally SDS 11 game reserving feature gives players in any jurisdiction the comfort and convenience of refreshment breaks away from their favourite game and favourite machine, without the worry that someone else will step in, play the machine and benefit from a big payout. Bally SDS 11 also has important benefits for operators, including a range of new features to enhance the fraud protection capability of the Bally SDS series. “On jackpot hits we’ve added in a credit ‘key off’ for fraud protection,” says Mr Doyle. “Once the jackpot is hit, instead of paying them [the player] out in cash, the slot attendant comes and keys over the machine. We use SAS [Slot Accounting Standard] commands to key off the game. Monies in the jackpot go straight onto a credit meter. Often a high level customer will just continue to play. They don’t have to have their play interrupted. The fraud protection is that when that key Bally: The Next Generation Bally Technologies’ Slot Data System 11 is one of the company’s many products helping to drive the Asian slot revolution