Inside Asian Gaming

September 2014 inside asian gaming 53 chairman of Delta. “Our primary focus has always been on providing premium experiences as we stand for luxury and glamour at each of our properties.” A longtime gambler, Mr Mody became chairman of Mumbai- based and -traded Delta in 2008. The company holds three of the five floating casinos licenses issued in Goa and its Daman property is set to become India’s first full-fledged casino resort. Mr Mody, a graduate of the University of Bombay, spent most of his career in real estate. Among his achievements is the development of Crossroads (now Sobo Central), Mumbai’s first world-class shopping mall. His wife, Zia Mody, is a well-known corporate attorney. Delta’s first casino on Goa’s Mandovi River, now the Deltin Jakq , has 400 live gaming positions. In 2010, the company bought the gaming license from the owner of the Caravela and refurbished the vessel. The rebranded Deltin Caravela has 200 live gaming positions. Delta then acquired another vessel, the Horseshoe , renamed it the Deltin Royale and built it into India’s largest gambling cruise ship, with 850 positions. Delta also owns Goa’s Deltin Empress , a luxury floating hotel, and two luxury hotels in the capital of Panaji, the Deltin Suites and the boutique Deltin Palms. The total impact on revenues has been steadily positive since 2012, but the outlook in Goa is uncertain—Manohar Parrikar, chief minister of the state, has said he wants all gaming out of the Mandovi, and the Deltin Caravela is said to be looking for a new home. The Deltin hotel and casino in Daman, with 176 rooms and 60,000 square feet of gaming space, received five-star certification in July and is awaiting its gaming license ahead of an expected 2015 opening. It will be India’s largest casino and the first in the country to operate outside of Goa. Delta is also said to be seeking a second site for gaming operations in Daman. Speaking on the sidelines of PhilWeb’s annual stockholders’ meeting last month, Dennis Valdes shrugged off the prospect of greater competition to his e-games outlets in the Philippines from the country’s new and upcoming integrated resorts. “It’s a completely different market,” he said. “I think by now 50% of [Resorts World Manila’s and Solaire’s] revenues are coming from foreigners and the ultra-rich Filipinos, while the e-games concept is more of a 7-11 and Ministop, or a neighborhood bar.” PhilWeb currently serves more than 40,000 customers a day via its network of online cafes, sports betting kiosks and mobile games. It operates 7,638 gaming terminals spread over 299 outlets, up from 282 a year earlier. Although PhilWeb is essentially an Internet gaming company, Mr Valdes points out that the company needs its PAGCOR- licensed land-based locations in order to function. “If you are in the e-commerce business you need to have a combination of brick-and- mortar and the Internet because I don’t think that the infrastructure in our country is robust enough to be able to fully support a 100% mobile business.” The Philippines is a difficult country to call when it comes to predicting how politics will affect the prospects of companies like PhilWeb. Proposals for outlawing Internet cafes, which have been heard for years, continue to resound among politicians and lawmakers. This is also true overseas, in Guam, for example, where PhilWeb was forced to shut down its operations in the second quarter following changes in the island’s gaming legislation. The company says it expects its Guam Sweeps outlets to reopen later this year, however, after it develops and installs new gaming products that comply with the updated regulations. Dennis Valdes President PhilWeb Corp. Mr Valdes told reporters last month that his company is looking at Myanmar, Palau, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand as new areas of opportunity, adding, “We continue to believe that there are exciting gaming opportunities in the region, but will be more conservative as we move forward in choosing projects that are right for us.” Regulatory risk will be ever-present as the company pursues its aggressive plan of regional expansion, though it appears to have enough irons in the fire to mitigate the fallout of negative political developments in any single jurisdiction.