Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2009 35 (-) Yasushi Shigeta President & CEO, Angel Group In terms of casino inventory, playing cards are the ‘softest’ bit of the ‘hardware’, requiring a very high replacement rate. The replacement rate is highest in Asia, where baccarat players bend the cards as they slowly peek at them, requiring the cards to be discarded after each hand. To give an idea of the higher intensity of playing card usage in a baccarat- dominated market such as Macau, Wynn Resorts’ Macau property, with 400 gaming tables, goes through about half a million decks each month, and although its Vegas property only has 140 tables, it takes a year for it to go through that many decks (i.e. the Macau property uses about four times as many decks per table). Any supplier that claims to control the majority of the playing card supply segment in the world’s high betting volume baccarat market—namely Macau—stands to generate a very high turnover of business. Japan’s Angel Playing Cards, which with its US subsidiary trades under the name Angel Group, claims an 80% share of the Macau casino supply market and a 70% share in Asia Pacific as a whole. Apart from supplying playing cards, Angel also pioneered the electronic baccarat card shoe. The Angel Eye shoe is used on over 4,000 tables around the world, enabling big improvements in security and efficiency for casino operators. Since its foundation in 1956, Angel has been dedicated to manufacturing all types of playing cards and gaming cards for domestic and international markets. The company started supplying major casinos in 1998. Since then it has established a reputation for quality and service amongst customers. The company says this has allowed it to build market share in the land- based gaming and cruise ship segments of the Asia Pacific market in particular. Angel, based in Higashiomi, Japan, has 135 staff dedicated to producing high specification products, including packs tailor-made for individual operators and venues. Since 2005 the Angel success story has been led by Yasushi Shigeta, the company’s President & CEO. Mr Shigeta began his career by working as a management consultant after graduating from Kyoto University in 1990. In 1993 he joined Angel Group where he worked his way up from middle management to become a director of the business in 1995, finally being appointed to the top job in 2005. 28 34 (-) Cath Burns Managing Director and Vice President Asia Pacific, Bally Technologies Macau include: Bally’s SDS® slot-accounting and player-tracking system; 420 Bally iVIEW™ player-interface displays; the company’s CMP Casino Management System with a new junket module fully adapted and configurable to Asia’s requirements; and the award-winning TableView™ Real-Time Table Rating and Player-Tracking system. Ms Burns is also leading Bally’s relaunch in Australia. Bally, along with other slots and systems manufacturers, has identified new sales opportunities in this mature market as operators look to boost margins and profits by re-equipping with the latest and most revenue-efficient casino management technology. Ms Burns joined Bally Technologies in March 2005 and immediately set about establishing the company’s head office in Macau for both its gaming and systems business operations. This included hiring staff, implementing policies and procedures and directing daily operations. One of her major accomplishments was managing the near flawless installation of Bally’s slot and player-tracking systems at the Venetian Macao Resort and Casino— Asia’s largest casino with more than 3,500 slot machines and 1,200 table games. She and her team were also responsible for acquiring a 23.9% share of the machines on the gaming floor at the new City of Dreams casino resort complex on the Cotai Strip in Macau. This represents the largest property- opening order Bally has obtained in the Asia- Pacific market to date. Immediately prior to joining Bally, Ms Burns was President of Sandals, Sandals, Sandals, a shoe retail business. In that role she increased sales by 20% and created a cost-saving inventory management system. Previously,MsBurnswasanaccountmanager for IBM Australia, providing consulting expertise to customers on information technology trends and equipment options for the gaming industry. During her tenure with IBM, Ms Burns received the Asia Pacific Marketing Excellence Award and the Asia Pacific Region Marketing Award, and was a member of IBM’s “100% Club.” She also managed the Australia office ofVideo Lottery Consultants for six years. development. Only when liquidity returns can several other ambitious Paul Steelman designs—including the US$2 billion Macao Studio City adjacent to Venetian Macao and the US$4.2 billion beachfront Ho Tram Strip destination resort—be realised. According to Mr Steelman, themed casinos are faux pas and today’s trends are tomorrow’s design disasters. One sinking copycat theme we were spared from was a Titanic casino. In 1998, immediately after the movie’s tremendous box office success, Mr Steelman recalls “a guy called me up, and brought in a drawing made by a sign guy. Here was the Titanic casino with melting ice in Las Vegas. That year I saw four people come in with the Titanic Casino idea. “People tend to copy success, but here’s the difference between people who copy success, and people who learn from it. People who learn from success advance it. They learn and then they advance. “People have an idea, and they think the idea is worth some money. But believe me; Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson have a million ideas. So they’re not going to buy any idea from anyone else. SteveWynn, over a period of time, advanced. He advancedThe Mirage to the Bellagio. He advanced Bellagio to the Wynn. He always advances.” Cath Burns is widely considered to be one of the rising stars of Asian gaming for her leadership and performance in building Bally’s market share in Macau from what amounted to a standing start. That track record was confirmed in August when the company announced that L’Arc Macau and RGB Macau, slot manager of the new L’Arc Macau casino resort, had purchased a range of Bally Systems products for the venue’s autumn 2009 opening. Bally Systems products ordered by L’Arc