Inside Asian Gaming

MAY 2015 inside asian gaming 47 Insights IAG : What are the differences between booking Western acts and Asian ones? It varies, obviously. For the Western acts, you have to wait for the tours to come through the region. Because obviously to go after Katy Perry, for example, and say we want you to do a one-off show in Macau and bring that rather elaborate stage setting and all the equipment, would almost be prohibitively expensive. One of the things we’re always conscious about with anything that we put on in our arena or our theater is that we want to make the ticket pricing or scaling affordable. It doesn’t do us any good to bring the world’s best entertainment and for it not to be affordable for people to attend it, particularly people within our community. We’re always mindful of having affordable ticket prices. So with Western acts the prevailing wisdom is that it has to be part of a tour. It’s very rare that we’ll try to do a one off. We often try to act in concert if we can with our colleagues at Marina Bay Sands. So if Katy is coming, we’ll see if we can do it in Singapore as well as here, so we’re bidding for multiple shows rather than just one show here, which perhaps give us some leverage. Because of what we’ve been doing in Macau, we get calls to let us know about tours forming in the region and ask us whether we’re interested in booking a particular artist that’s passing through. and ability to handle logistics plays an important part. “I think an advantage that we have in this is our core business model always stemmed from what’s known here in Asia as MICE—meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions. Our chairman, Sheldon Adelson, helped transform Las Vegas with the concept of MICE, and that strong MICE infrastructure that we have here, what’s known as our C&E Department, makes it easy for us to stage obviously large- scale meetings, conventions and exhibitions, and also, if you think about a major movie production being a large-scale production with several hundred people involved, the moving of heavy equipment around, logistical challenges, cordoning off parts of the property, our C&E infrastructure is well suited for doing something like that.” Sands China is importantly also able to provide accommodation to the cast and crew of movie productions and the various entertainment events it hosts, including awards ceremonies such as the recent China Music Awards and Asian Film Festival and its Top Rank boxing matches. It can also accommodate the hundreds of international reporters who descend on the city to cover those events. in China. Lions Gate, which subsequently announced a major deal with Hunan TV for co-production and funding—although we didn’t know that then—didn’t need much of an impetus to have on their resume production actively going on in China, in Macau. So it was a natural coming together for us. All the original cast members are in the sequel [including Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine], as well as the addition of Taiwanese superstar singer Jay Chou, and Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. So it was quite a big event for Macau.” As Mr Messinger points out, Venetian Macao’s infrastructure The cast of Now You See Me: The Second Act Sands China has helped put Macau on the global entertainment map. The 15,000-seat Cotai Arena has been graced by international headliners as well as Asia’s biggest stars, including “Eason Chan, Hacken Lee, Alan Tam, and all my favorites in the K-pop world like Girls Generation, 2NE1, Super Junior, Big Bang,” adds Senior Vice President of Marketing Scott Messinger. K-pop sensations Super Junior and Girls Generation (right) Cantopop legends Eason Chan and Alan Tam and Hacken Lee (right)