Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2013 8 China Syndrome A new front has opened in the war between Crown Resorts and Echo Entertainment for control of Australia—Queensland—and they’re not the only ones eyeing the state’s potential as a magnet for the lucrative Asian tourist market COVER STORY Echo is pledging up to $1 billion on a new Treasury Hotel & Casino in Brisbane if it can relocate into a redeveloped government district. B ack in July, James Packer went on “Financial Review Sunday” on Australia’s Nine Network, which he used to own, to make Crown Resorts’ pitch for a gaming license in Brisbane. Flush with victory, having just muscled into Sydney, Echo Entertainment’s home turf, he now was on national television assailing his rival’s vulnerable northern flank. Treasury Casino & Hotel has made a hash of its monopoly of the country’s third-largest city, the billionaire contended—a “terrible” job, he said—“The quality of the properties in Surfers Paradise and Brisbane is a disgrace.” John Redmond, Echo’s chief executive, has been in the industry more than 25 years, long enough to recognize his company has to concede a portion of this brutal assessment. A Las Vegas veteran who held senior positions at the old Caesars World and at MGM Grand and MGM Mirage, he’s also been around long enough to know what he’s got in Brisbane and what it earns from 80 tables games, 1,300 or so EGMs and 128 hotel rooms housed in a listed building that cannot be altered or expanded and argues that granting a second license would be a serious wrong turn. As he’s put it, “We are not Singapore.” He’s been on a public relations offensive of his own since joining the company last fall, the second Yank to hold the job in as many years, and its theme—that “Echo holds the key”—comes with a promise to turn things around in Queensland with A$1.5 billion in fresh investment—$700 million-$1 billion of it in Brisbane—and an assurance that if he’s allowed to move Treasury out of its historically ornate prison and integrate it with a public-private redevelopment scheme planned for the government district a few blocks away he’ll make of it a “a world- class facility that will put Brisbane on the international map”. On the condition, that is, that Echo