Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2012 4 Cover Story O n 14th February, Valentine’s Day, the casino at Genting Group’s Resorts World Sentosa (RWS)—the first of Singapore’s two casino-centred Integrated Resorts (IRs) to open—will celebrate its second birthday. The US$4.7 billion RWS was actually officially unveiled on 20th January, 2010, but it took a couple more weeks for the casino to get licensed and allow the public inside. While mass-market gamblers are still very much in love with the casino at RWS, it appears the better heeled among them, as well as high rollers, have started to gravitate towards the city-state’s second IR, Las Vegas Sands Corp’s Marina Bay Sands (MBS). Although Inside Asian Gaming ’s sources suggest they observe significantly higher casino visitor numbers at RWS than at MBS (anecdotally, around 20%more), MBS’s share of total Singapore gaming revenue overtook that of RWS in the second quarter of last year. The inference is players at MBS are betting significantly more on average than their counterparts at RWS. Up until the first quarter of 2011, the casino at RWS comfortably outgrossed that at MBS. Among the factors in RWS’s favour were its two-and-a-half month headstart and the considerable competitive insights and advantages Genting gained from operating a monopoly casino property in Malaysia since 1970, including an intimate familiarity with the wants and needs of players from Malaysia and Singapore and an extensive base of customers— many of whom belong to its loyalty card programme—in the region. Genting also benefited from some of LVS’s rookie mistakes in the Singapore market, the most notable of which was trying to replicate the games mix at its Macau properties. Unlike A dragon watches over the The Bullring at Resorts World Sentosa during the Chinese NewYear period Looking for a Comeback Last year, Resorts World Sentosa lost its lead in the Singapore gaming market to Marina Bay Sands. While MBS appears to be holding on to the lead, some predict RWS could see a revenue spurt come the second half of the Year of the Dragon Cosy interior—the main casino floor at Resorts World Sentosa