Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming MAY 2015 48 Insights Four years ago, it was us having to pick up the phone and call people continuously to arrange the acts. The Asian acts are less tied to specific tours. It’s when they’re available, when we think we want a program in the arena. A lot of them are working through promoters. So it’s a different business model and it’s very successful and it’s a good business model. What we do with all entertainment is we’ve done a lot of research in terms of what our customers want to see, both Western and Asian. We also talk extensively through our internal constituencies here, the different business units to see whether or not the makes sense against that. You’ll see a range of shows in there that literally go from 4,000 seats up to 13,000 seats. And with the appropriate cost modelling against each of those instances. The same thing takes place in the Venetian Theater as well—shows like the China National Ballet, the Philadelphia Orchestra go into that, and the challenge is there you’re programming a 1,700-seat venue versus a large arena venue. But we have a lot of enquiry after the Venetian Theater because it’s probably one of the most technologically advanced venues in the region, simply because it was built out initially for a rather spectacular show that required a lot of technology. When you’re deciding whether to book a show, obviously you need to make a prediction of how many tickets you might be able to sell. How does that work? Over the last four years, the people we have in place have become really good at judging what they think the market might bear for a certain performer. For the tours coming through the region, the promoters themselves have a good sense, and we might know how someone’s done previously in the region, in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Japan, etc. A lot of the Asian acts, they’ve been here multiple times so we have our history. So we know now how Alan Tam and Hacken Lee do here, even when they’re here either just the two of them or they’re here as part of the Wynners. Grasshopper have been here so many times that I joke with them we’re going to rename our arena the Grasshopper Arena. So we have a good sense of how they all will do. We’ve had show makes sense. Because there may be someone I personally would die and go to heaven if they came here to perform, but I could go into a room with younger colleagues here and they’d look at me like “huh, who’s that person?” And then as the discussions unfold in terms of what either the Western or Asian show is looking for in terms of price, we then try to determine whether we can scale the arena to match the expectation of that price point, or if we don’t think we can do a full 13,000- seat show in there, it’s a 7,000-seat show, we then have to have a serious discussion as to whether we think the cost model “The people who head up our box office operation are a strong factor as well. They watch continuously the acceleration and the pace of ticket sales, which we look at every day to see how we’re doing. That helps us gauge our marketing of the events and to know whether to turn on the tap or turn it down in terms of support.” “For our guests and our customers, the premieres can be truly wonderful experiences. And it’s also good for Macau because people are taking selfie photographs and posting and sending them back into China, so it’s showing a different Macau experience.” Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone attended a VIP screening of Expendables 3 at The Venetian Macao last year. The Venetian Macao hosts premieres for several movies including From Vegas to Macau , when Chow Yun Fat , Nicholas Tse and the entire cast were in attendance.