Inside Asian Gaming

MARCH 2018 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 35 understand problem gambling better and to educate them. Casino operators these days run responsible gambling programs on their own and not just because of government policy. AWS: What could the Macau operators do better? DF: Online training is a good direction because we have more and more gaming and non-gaming employees employed by casino operators. So simply relying on classroom training, by way of resources, is time consuming and may not be so efficient. In the future I encourage casino operators to use the online platform more. But they also need to constantly check the effectiveness of the training. I already suggested to Galaxy that they evaluate their staff before and after orientation to measure the difference. Then two years later you refresh or recheck again whether it’s effective both before and after their training. That way you can modify your training materials more effectively. This is what we call continuous improvement. IN FOCUS Having said that, it is much more significant to determine human gambling behavior. If we have a good sense of value, a proper sense of value, I think we can get away from problem gambling behavior. Gambling is good for leisure, once in a while, even during the Chinese New Year. But just for fun. AWS: Those sort of things are values though and it’s very hard to teach values. And a person’s parents need to have those values too in the first place, so that’s not going to be quick. DF: Yes. You’re right. However, the company can do something. There’s a very important core value of the company called corporate culture. It means the company can create a culture for when their staff have leisure time. It could be sports, charity work, volunteer work. Peer learning, or even peer pressure, can be a very good example. Let them have a very healthy life when they have a day off. Another thing is making sure the company takes a correct position towards gambling. In the beginning of casino liberalization, some dealers spoke to me saying, “You know what Davis? I’m very surprised. Last night my table lost almost HK$100,000 and then my manager moved me to another table. Do you know why? Because they believe there may be Feng Shui issues.” But come on, this happened by chance. No one can control which table wins HK$1 million or loses HK$1 million, so that means the management has some misunderstanding about gambling, about the business they are doing. It’s very hard to change, I understand. It’s part of the culture. It’s part of the corporate understanding. They need to do it correctly to present a correct understanding of gambling. AWS: How does Macau compare to other jurisdictions in regards to problem gambling? DF: I can’t say we’re at the top, but we have developed a very good model for the Chinese community. Macau, I think, is the first Chinese community to develop a responsible gambling policy and I hope it is working. All the data, including the prevalence rate, actually meets our expectations. It is under control. So now casino operators provide dealer training on responsible gambling not just at orientation but every two years. They have refresher training. Just recently I visited Galaxy, who provide online training to everybody.