Inside Asian Gaming

September 2014 inside asian gaming 77 Plans Collapse for Casino on Fiji Plans for Fiji’s first casino are in limbo now that the developer holding the license has walked away from the troubled project after failing to get it off the ground. Radio New Zealand says US-based One Hundred Sands has sold its interest to an unidentified party, confirming an earlier report from the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe of the US state of Washington, which lost US$1.5 million on the project as an investor. One Hundred Sands was granted an exclusive 15-year license in December 2011 for a resort casino with 200 hotel rooms on Denarau Island. Pegged at US$290 million, plans called for a spa, pools, a nightclub, restaurants, MICE facilities and a 1,500-seat performing arts center. The company promised 1,600 jobs in the construction and operation of the resort, which was supposed to open last October. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiym, minister of trade for the South Pacific archipelago, which lies about 1,100 miles north of New Zealand, said at the time the casino would be “fantastic for the country”. “A lot of jobs will be created and, likewise, the economy will be boosted financially.” a leading name in lottery systems and technologies, is paying $83.30 per share for the Las Vegas-based machine gaming giant, a premium of 38% over Bally’s last closing price. It’s the second major acquisition in the slots sector for Scientific Games in the last year, following on the company’s $1.42 billion purchase of slot-maker WMS Industries. In July, global lottery giant GTECH reached an agreement to acquire International Game Technology, the largest slot-maker by market share in North America, for $6.4 billion. Bally earlier this year closed on a $1.3 billion deal to acquire SHFL entertainment, the world’s largest maker of table games shufflers and a leading name in electronic tables and table games equipment. Aristocrat recently agreed to pay $1.3 billion for Video Gaming Technologies, a leading maker of slots for the Class II tribal markets in the US, and also has acquired Paltronics, a well-known developer of slot machine bonusing and jackpot technologies. The consolidation speaks to a fundamental realignment in an industry that is struggling to cope with slowing sales of new and replacement games to casinos that are no longer growing gaming revenues in most US markets and in many of those markets are seeing those revenues steadily decline. Saturation is a worrying issue now after years of jurisdictional expansion, as is gambling fatigue among increasing numbers of consumers who no longer have the wherewithal post-recession to spend the way they did. Demographics are another concern. The players who comprised the traditional slot market are aging or dying, and machine gaming, and land-based gaming as a whole, doesn’t have the same appeal as an entertainment proposition among younger audiences. The SciGames-Bally deal is interesting as well for the return of Gavin Isaacs, who was named CEO of SciGames earlier this year and was chief operating officer of Bally before moving to SHFL, where he served as CEO and was instrumental in engineering the sale to Bally. It is expected also that Bally CEO Richard Haddrill and Chairman David Robbins will join the SciGames board. SciGames’ largest shareholder is Ronald Perelman, who is ranked 27th on the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $14 billion. INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS Gavin Isaacs The general secretary of Fiji’s Hotel Workers Union, Daniel Urai, was less sanguine, telling the Fiji Times his members were skeptical and believed the government had been misled. In March, it was reported that One Hundred Sands was paying the government US$100,000 a month in contract agreement delays, which appeared to signal that funding had been secured and the project was back on track. One Hundred Sands Chairman Larry Claunch said at the time that construction was under way with an opening expected in mid-2015. But that was thrown into doubt in April when the Snoqualmie, who own a casino in Washington, said they had ended their involvement and accused One Hundred Sands of defaulting on the $1.5 million the company had borrowed from them. Mr Claunch responded with a claim that he had secured funding from other sources. “The project is moving forward quickly,” he said. Denarau Island