Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2009 52 Silver Heritage S ome of the best business partnerships actually begin after work over a pint of beer and a televised sports game. So it was with Silver Heritage’s chief executive officer, Mike Bolsover, and chief operations officer, Tim Shepherd. Watching the 2003 Rugby World Cup at a Marriott hotel bar in Malaysia, the pair discovered they were both independently establishing sports bars in Southeast Asian casinos to capitalise on the growing popularity of televised European football and the advent of Internet sports betting. Mr Bolsover had been a proprietary trader and business development director with thesportsbettinggroupVictorChandler International for four years from 1999. Mr Shepherd had moved to Hong Kong in the mid 1990s and had worked as a consultant to the UK-founded bookmaker Ladbrokes and to Macauslot, Macau’s only licensed sports betting operation in which Macau’s former gaming monopolist Dr Stanley Ho has a stake. With their common interests and complementary expertise, Messrs Bolsover and Shepherd joined forces just as Silver Heritage’s first sports lounge went online at Laos’ original licensed casino—now known as Dansavanh Nam Ngum Resort—in 2003. Silver Heritage—originally a middleman betweenAsiancasinooperatorsandoverseas licensed bookmakers like Stan James—was at that time leading the development of Las Vegas style sports betting in Asia. The company gained a foothold for suppliers in the region through a well-connected local network and attracted new customers to licensed casinos on the Thailand-Laos and Thailand-Cambodia borders. NowadaysSilverHeritage’soriginalsports betting lounges have been transformed into fully automated, directly managed, electronic gaming areas, with sports betting just one component of the business mix. The floors in the lounges are usually split equally between server-based games, slots and automated table games. Around 95% of the sites’ revenues are from these products, with the balance from sports betting and poker. Direct management of slot facilities in a venue licensed to another operator— usually on a revenue sharing basis—is not a brand new concept in Asia. The key to success in this field is in execution of that management. That’s in terms of signing Raising the Game Silver Heritage is ramping up its directly managed slot business in Asia Club 19 at the Dansavanh Golf Resort Clubhouse in Laos