Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | November 2010 4 Editorial Inside Asian Gaming is published by Must Read Publications Ltd 8J Ed. Comercial Si Toi 619 Avenida da Praia Grande Macau Tel: (853) 2832 9980 For subscription enquiries, please email subs@asgam.com For advertising enquiries, please email ads@asgam.com or call: (853) 6680 9419 www.asgam.com Inside Asian Gaming is an official media partner of: http://www.gamingstandards.com Michael Grimes We crave your feedback. Please email your comments tomichael@asgam.com Publisher Kareem Jalal Director João Costeira Varela Editor Michael Grimes Contributors Desmond Lam, Steve Karoul I. Nelson Rose, Richard Marcus Shenée Tuck, James J. Hodl Andrew MacDonald William R. Eadington Graphic Designer Brenda Chao Photography Ike Can’t Buy Me Love When, five years ago, a famous gaming resort developer first referred to Macau as ‘Asia’s Las Vegas,’ he coined a phrase that had resonance around the world. There’s just one problem. He was wrong. Macau is not like Las Vegas, or at least not yet. They both have a lot of casinos filled with slot machines, multiplayer games and live tables, and a lot of hotels, but there the similarities pretty much come to a grinding halt. The games people like, and even the way they play them, are fundamentally different in Macau from what happens in Vegas. Many Chinese people don’t even bother booking a hotel room. They just play until their money runs out and sleep on the ferry or bus home. You can’t even say there is a single Asian‘style’to casino gaming. That would be like saying the people in every European country have great fashion sense. Macau is not the same as Singapore, Singapore is not the same as the Philippines, and so on. In Singapore, for example, electronic table games have been a big hit. In Macau, the response to them so far has been rather underwhelming. In the first half of 2010, only 4.6% of Macau’s gaming gross came from slots. On the Las Vegas Strip, slots accounted for 48.7% of the gaming gross. Most of Macau’s gaming revenues in 2010 have come not from providing mass floor entertainment in the style of Las Vegas, but in catering to the needs of a numerically tiny but statistically gigantic group of VIP baccarat players, mostly from China. One of the great gifts American commerce has brought to the world is global branding. Mario Prada’s descendants might still be selling imported luggage from a small shop in one of the less fashionable streets of Milan were it not for the power of branding. Even if a Chinese person doesn’t speak much English, the chances are he or she will know at least two words: ‘okay’ and ‘McDonalds’. That’s a tribute to the global power specifically of American brand values. Its influence can also be seen in the consistently high standards of service and management that the American operators have brought to Macau from their home base. But in Macau, casino branding is not yet the be all and end all that it is in Las Vegas. It’s important in the mass market, in terms of player incentives and customer relationships, but less so in the high roller segment. There, the customer’s relationship is principally with the junket agent that brought him through the door. He cares less about whether the girl on the VIP club reception has a nice smile, and rather more about whether his junket agent buddy will step outside for a 4 a.m. nightcap (often involving Johnnie Walker Blue Label, another, rather mystifying triumph of branding) and a karaoke session after a hard night at the tables. The junkets shop around among the operators for the best commission deal on their players’ roll, and will up sticks taking their players with them if someone makes them a better offer up the road—as many a casino marketing executive has found out to his cost. Westerners have been trying to change China for the best part of 300 years, and for 300 years the Chinese have—mostly—been politely smiling and continuing to do their own thing. Catholic missionaries have been trying to crack Macau for even longer. And still most of the locals prefer lighting an incense stick to their favourite household god than saying three Hail Marys and going to Confession on a Sunday. The late musician John Lennon once caused an international outcry by claiming The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Not even brash, beautiful Las Vegas could claim to be bigger than China.