Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming September 2014 40 live music, themed party nights and wine-tasting events. To draw more mainland Chinese the club also has added a betting venue in Beijing. Considering that the HKJC is Hong Kong’s largest taxpayer, as well as the largest private donor to charity in the city, contributing an average of over HK$1 billion a year, his impact is significant, and the gratitude of his adopted city has been expressed in a seat on the board of directors of the Community Chest of Hong Kong and an appointment in 2009 as a justice of the peace. A former professional footballer, Mr Engelbrecht-Bresges joined the club in 1998 as director of Racing after serving six years as CEO of the governing body of German horseracing and breeding. He was promoted to executive director, Racing, in 2000 and has served as CEO since the start of the 2007 season, when he brought in William Nader, who headed the New York Racing Association, to ably take over the executive director’s responsibilities. He also serves as vice chairman of the Asian Racing Federation, whose members include 20 of the sport’s governing bodies in the region, and is vice chairman of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. The opening of a new hotel later this year at Macau Fisherman’s Wharf could kick off the revival of the moribund theme park that sits beside the city’s main ferry terminal on the Outer Harbour. The theme park, which includes the Babylon Casino, was opened by local entrepreneur David Chow in partnership with Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho at the end of 2005. Its replica Tang Dynasty palace and erupting volcano failed to impress mainland Chinese visitors and have since been demolished to make way for a much-needed revamp, budgeted at HK$6 billion (US$770 million). To raise the necessary funds, Mr Chow floated a chunk of his Macau Legend Development on the Hong Kong stock market, but due to lukewarm investor interest, only collected US$238 million from the exercise. Mr Chow met the shortfall by securing an additional HK$4.2 billion (US$541.9 billion) in bank loans this year. The revamp, divided into three phases, will add three new hotels with more than 1,200 rooms (the property currently has only a single 72-room hotel), a pier, a dinosaur museum and 350 more gaming tables. Some analysts have cautioned that it could fail to get all the expected tables owing to the government’s cap on the market-wide growth in the number of tables of 3% per annum. But the first hotel is on track to open in the fourth quarter of this year, with the entire revamp slated for completion in 2017. Mr Chow has been involved in Macau’s gaming industry for four decades, first as a junket representative, then as a casino developer and operator. The 63-year-old investor, husbandman, high-stakes gambler, junketeer, honorary consul (Cape Verde) and all-around mover and shaker, a former member of the Macau Legislative Assembly and a longtime protégé of Stanley Ho’s, believes he still has a thing or two to teach the “new entries,” as he derides his Las Vegas-style competition on Cotai. Macau Legend Development, which in addition to Macau Fisherman’s Wharf and Babylon Casino also operates the Pharaoh’s Palace Casino located nearby at the company’s Landmark Macau hotel, reported a 5.1% year-on-year increase in gaming revenue in the David Chow Co-Chairman and CEO Macau Legend Development first half of this year to HK$654.9 million, though profit was down 15.1% to HK$226.4 million, largely attributable to depreciation of the company’s yuan-denominated investments. In an effort to boost the mass-market appeal of its gaming properties, the company purchased a casino management system from Bally Technologies in July. But the mission to draw mass-market players to Fisherman’s Wharf with pachinko-style slot machines supplied by Japan’s Dynam Holdings appears to have stalled. More than 100 units were to have been set up at the theme park this year, but Macau Legend announced last month that the installations would likely be delayed. Earlier this year, Mr Chow secured a HK$680 million loan to fund a “Portuguese”-themed retail and entertainment complex he has conceived for Hengqin, a mainland Chinese island that sits adjacent to Macau and has been earmarked for development by Macau enterprises in order to support the diversification of the city’s economy. Hengqin’s land area is three times that of Macau, and its population is expected to grow from a mere 7,000 last year to 280,000 by 2020 as it proceeds to develop as an effective non- gaming annex to Macau.