Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2012 24 Asian Gaming 50 – 2012 18 Tom Hall Business Development Director ONEworks Tom Hall heads global business development for ONEworks, a market- leading sports book platform provider that has evolved over the past 10 years to be the chosen supplier to some of the largest sports books in the world. The company has deep roots in Asia’s highly sophisticated and competitive sports betting markets, and having established dominance in the region, has been taking its leading-edge technologies worldwide. No one is more familiar from an operations standpoint with the preferences of the region’s sports bettors than Tom Hall. He understands the need for bookmaking and book management skills that can cope with high betting volumes, large individual bets and, in particular, Asian gamblers’ favorite—“in-play” (also known as “in- running”) betting. Such play—gambling on propositions derived from any number of possible outcomes during the live action of a game—may constitute 80% by volume of Internet betting in Asia, according to some industry estimates. Currently, in-play betting is not as widespread in the rest of the world. In the large and lucrative jurisdictions where online betting is legal in Europe, it accounts for a minority of bets. The reason seems to be that European companies are not keen to take have been handled on ONEworks’ systems at peak times—economies of scale come into effect. That means the cost per transaction is significantly reduced compared to traditional Western bookmaking, where the operator manages the customer rather thanmanaging the price, and ONEworks is therefore able to provide a flexible and competitive solution to customers. Mr Hall is recognized as one of the world’s experts on interactive and online gambling. He came to ONEworks in late 2010 from formerly UK-listed AsianLogic, which he co-founded and helped build into one of Asia’s largest providers of Web gambling and betting services. He still serves as ALOG’s non-executive chairman. ALOG continues growing strongly, with the long-established Dafabet brand one of the most recognized in the region. Dafabet is now the international betting partner of English Premier League football clubs Everton and West Bromwich Albion. The company is also continuing with its mission to raise poker’s profile throughout Asia. ALOG has been strongly promoting and expanding the reach of the Asian Poker Tour since acquiring it in 2008 and has been pursuing several poker initiatives in both play-for-fun and real-money environments. Previously, Mr Hall served as group CEO for gaming software and support giant Playtech, where he was responsible for overseeing customer growth and the development of customized software for Asian markets. on the high risk and small margins typically considered acceptable by Asian bookmakers. Mr Hall and ONEworks are determined to change that outlook, for the benefit of gamblers and bookmakers alike. ONEworks offers several versions of its ONEbook platform and associated services to licensees looking to target international, European or Asian markets. ONEbook handles in a typical month more than 18,000 live markets across more than 5,000 in-running soccer games and an additional 1,800 in-running events and 3,000 markets in 29 other sports. There are significant upfront costs in establishing a sophisticated bet management system. But once it’s running andhandling largevolumesof transactions— up to 250,000 concurrent end-user players 19 George Tanasijevich President and CEO Marina Bay Sands At Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, George Tanasijevich presides over what many consider the most profitable casino in the world. He was instrumental in Las Vegas Sands Corp’s winning the license in the first place, and since then has proved his mettle as the man to steer the operation to new highs. Although some analysts were disappointed with the second-quarter earnings reported by MBS, they remain confident that the resort has the power to weather the global downturn. Lower rolling chip volume, exacerbated by low hold on VIP table play and higher provisions for accounts receivable, negatively affected results. The casino produced US$330.4 million of adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, down 18.5% year on year. But non-rolling chip drop was up 8.2%, slot handle was up 15.1%, and hotel revenues grew 30.1%, showing there is definitely growth in core segments of the operation. This will prove critical to MBS going forward if analysts are correct in their belief that business will remain steady in Singapore, but significant spurts in growth may be hard to come by in the future. In Mr Tanasijevich’s second role as global head of development, pursuing new projects for LVS worldwide, he is working to secure opportunities to keep the company Photo courtesy of Marina Bay Sands