Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2010 44 46 (33) Paul Steelman President and CEO Paul Steelman Design Group 47 (42) Alfredo ‘Albee’ Benitez President First Cagayan Leisure and Resorts Corp (PAGCOR). The bingo halls are in the country’s major shopping malls and offer a range of games including traditional bingo, electronic bingo, instant bingo pull-tabs and Rapid Bingo—a keno-type game. His vested interests with First Cagayan Leisure and Resorts Corp and Resorts World Corp may be what has prompted Congressman Benitez to identify himself with the reforming efforts of the new national president, Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino. President Aquino has talked openly of privatising PAGCOR. Congressman Benitez said in August that an offer by Philippine businessman Ramon Ang, Vice Chairman of the food and beverage conglomerate San Miguel Corporation, and a group of Malaysian investors to purchase PAGCOR outright from the government for US$10 billion should be “studied”. The figure was said by the bidders to be equivalent to PAGCOR’s income for 15 years. But Congressman Benitez—possibly wary of setting a dangerous precedent that could be applied to First Cagayan—urged that PAGCOR’s status as a regulator should be retained. He also pointed out that as PAGCOR’s remit still has 23 years left to run, the pricing of the buyout offer may not offer the best value for the public purse. Time will tell whether Mr Benitez’s canny decision to run for public office—just as the tide of political opinion seemed to be turning against gaming expansion in the Philippines—is enough to protect and nurture his gaming interests in that market. Business and politics are inextricably linked in the Philippines. So it’s not a surprise that Alfredo ‘Albee’ Benitez stood and won election as a Congressman during the country’s national polls in May. As head of the Philippines’ First Cagayan Leisure and Resorts Corp, Congressman Benitez also has an unusual (by the rest of the world’s standards) role as a regulator-cum- operator of online gaming. First Cagayan acts as regulator for all comers wishing to obtain an online gaming licence for offshore operations based out of the Cagayan Special Economic Zone Authority (CEZA). First Cagayan also operates some online gaming businesses on its own behalf. CEZA, a freeport set up in the north of the country by the Philippines government in 1995, is Asia’s first and so far only jurisdiction for legal licensing of online offshore gaming content and services. First Cagayan Leisure and Resorts Corp is in turn majority owned by a Philippines public company—Leisure and Resorts World Corp. Under the group umbrella, Congressman Benitez operates the country’s largest chain of bingo halls with 36 sites—all licensed and regulated in turn by the national land-based gaming regulator- cum-operator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation Mr Steelman has reached almost iconic status in the world of casino design, with the mere attachment of his name to a project sufficient to generate excitement among industry analysts and even casino players. It was to Mr Steelman that SJM turned when it needed to inject some glamour into its drastically scaled back Oceanus project next door to Macau Maritime Ferry Terminal on the Macau peninsula. Thanks largely to the global economic crisis of late 2008, Oceanus went from a US$800 million French-designed flagship property shaped like a sculptural representation of a ship’s sail, to a US$190 million project involving the gutting and re-branding of a former shopping centre, the ‘old’ New Yaohan, as a gaming venue. Given the modest budget with which Mr Steelman had to work, it’s a credit to his skills and pragmatism that the project managed to make an impression in a crowdedMacau peninsulamarket. It opened on time and on budget just before Christmas 2009. Mr Steelman was also responsible for the iconic design of the Hard Rock Casino that opened in June last year at Melco Crown Entertainment’s City of Dreams resort on Cotai, as well as the stadium configuration of the now internationally famous Sands Macao, Macau’s first decidedly mass market gaming venue, that opened in 2004. At this year’s G2E Asia trade showat VenetianMacao, Mr Steelman told an anecdote about meeting the singer Frank Sinatra when the latter was performing a season of shows at an Atlantic City casino. Mr Steelman—a novice architect at the time—was summoned to the star’s suite at the casino. It turned out Mr Sinatra wanted a water pipe running to the balcony so that he could water his tomato plants. Old Italian habits die hard, even for second and third generation immigrants. Nowadays, Mr Steelman is sought out as much for his own advice and consultancy expertise as for his skills at executing other people’s visions. At G2E Asia 2010, he set out his ideas about the future direction of Macau. His view is that the growth of the Chinese middle class with increasing disposable income and sophistication in consumer taste can only be good news for operators and for the development of casino and hotel design in Asia. Expect to see the influence of Mr Steelman and his design partnership grow across the region as China and its Southeast Asian neighbours move up the global GDP rankings. 48 (-) Joe Pisano CEO Jade Entertainment and Gaming Technologies, Inc Joe Pisano has more than 20 years of experience in the Asian betting and gaming industry. He is considered a particular authority on the markets in Southeast Asia and the Philippines and holds a Masters in Business and Technology from the University of New South Wales in Australia. Mr Pisano recently formed a gaming consultancy with David Briggs, former Managing Director, eGaming, for British betting group Ladbrokes, and Anna Sainsbury, a former Commercial Director at Technical Systems Testing, a specialist Internet and land-based gaming test laboratory and consultancy, which was acquired earlier this year by Gaming