Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2013 12 Tech Talk Those Amazing ETGs A technology for all seasons, and all reasons, electronic table games are fast becoming a defining characteristic of the Macau casino experience— and their appeal doesn’t stop there I t’s interesting how Wynn Macau’s recent decision to deploy 50 electronic table game seats raised an eyebrow or two around town, with one knowledgeable observer expressing surprise that Mobil Five-Star- rated Wynn was “joining the down-market, low-end mass”. “You could infer that maybe there is some struggle going on. … Are they losing market share?” To which three responses immediately suggest themselves: The first has to do with capacity constraints on the Macau peninsula, the effects of which have become more pronounced as Cotai expands. This is affecting Wynn no less than its neighbors. Commensurate with its size, Wynn Macau’s total share of the market is the VIPoperator,[Wynn]hasgraduallytransformed itself into anoperatorwithabalancedearnings profile.” For sure the company is no slouch when it comes to getting the most from its mass offering. Daily revenue at its main floor tables consistently exceeds citywide averages, while its average daily win per slot is famous for being tops in the market. All of which speaks directly to a third point: which is that it’s simply smart management to acknowledge the tidy business that low rollers have become in Macau. Market or customer “segmentation” is a term with wide currency these days and for good reason. “After gaining more experience, casinos now have gradually built up their customer data bases and gained a better grasp of customers’ preferences,” explains J.P. lowest of the six operators anyway. Its share of VIP has been slipping (it was down an estimated 1.9 percentage points in 2012). But in part this is an expected consequence of the company’s well-known discipline on price. No doubt Cotai is costing it some mass market as well. Its share of this high- margin cash play at the slots and main-floor tables was down about 2 percentage points last year and is expected to drop another percentage point or so in 2013. The second answer has to do more with image, or illusion, as the case may be. The company’s earnings mix is estimated to run about 47%VIP and 53%mass and non- gaming, which is about the same as SJM’s, and actually it’s the second-lowest VIP ratio in the market after Sands China’s. As J.P. Morganput it recently, “Despite always being perceived as a A fixture on The Venetian’s floor—LT Game’s popular Live Table Multi-Game