NEWS What next for Pennsylvania’s slots?


Table games may be arriving just in time as slots revenue dips in the Keystone State


The imminent arrival of table games in Pennsylvania’s nine casinos has focused much attention on the customers they could draw away from nearby, already ailing Atlantic City. Yet perhaps as important is the role that the tables – which will open for business between 8 and 16 July, after a swift round of testing by regulators – may play in making up for declining revenue from slots. On the surface, the numbers look good: slots in the


state brought in $201m gross revenue during May, up 13 percent on that month in 2009. And that certainly will have brought smiles to the


faces of Pennsylvania’s government (which has also pocketed a handy $165m for table game certifications). But for individual casinos, the picture is less rosy.


Indeed, the 13 percent increase was attributable to the opening of two new sites since May 2009, and figures from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board show that


Macau developers press ahead despite gov’t fears


SAR authorities want a more diverse economy, but casino firms still plan mega-projects


The government of Macau may be attempting to apply brakes to its runaway gaming industry, but that’s not deterring casino developers. As we reported last month, Chief Executive Fernando


Chui is trying to reduce the Chinese special administrative region’s economic dependence on gaming and diversify the economy. The Macau administration’s plan appears to be to stop


granting licences to new casino projects, although firms that have already received them will be allowed to go ahead – and there may lie the flaw in Macau’s scheme, for going ahead they certainly are. Las Vegas Sands, for example, has raised $1.75bn to


resume work on its trio of Cotai Strip developments – the Shangri-La, Sheraton, and Traders – after more than 18 months of inactivity. The firm is pitching the development as compliant with


Macau’s diversification policy. Its combined 6000 hotel rooms will, according to Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, “open up a new and larger base of potential customers who, because of the size of the events, were not previously able to bring their meetings or conventions


6 JULY 2010


to Macau”. The convention business is one non-gaming sector that the government has identified as suitable for Macau. But it’s a fair bet that quite a few of those hotel rooms


will be occupied by the gamblers who poured more than $1bn into Macau’s gaming businesses in just the first fortnight of May – 90 percent up on the previous year, although the government expects a somewhat less immodest overall 30 percent growth for this year. Meanwhile, Galaxy Macau expects to complete its Cotai


resort development by early 2011, and Wynn hopes to open for business in 2013. If Macau does, eventually, manage to slow gaming’s


growth rate there will be no shortage of other centres in the region keen to welcome casino developers with money to spend, and the consumers that flock after them. Governments in Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, the


Philippines and Vietnam are all reportedly looking at developing their gaming industries. Socially strict Singapore, however, is taking a similar


tack to Macau. It is only permitting integrated resorts where casinos occupy a very small share of the space – around three to five percent in the upcoming Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa facilities, for example.


in the seven venues that existed then, slots revenue actually wentdownby six percent over the year, to $157m. The worst affected sites were The Meadows


Racetrack and Casino, slumping 24 percent, and Mount Airy Casino Resort, down 18 percent. Only two casinos, Parx and Hollywood, saw slots revenue rise. It could be a blip – Pennsylvanian slots revenue has


generally been climbing over the last two years – or it could be symptomatic of a longer-term shift in the region’s gaming habits. The data will be further complicated by the scheduled September opening of a tenth casino, the SugarHouse in Philadelphia, and the debut of table games could either benefit slots (by attracting more customers) or speed their decline (by luring those customers away from the cabinets). Either way, though, it seems that Atlantic City’s latest


headache may be a welcome pick-me-up for Pennsylvania.


INBRIEF


MEXICO CALLING Magic Dreams hopes to establish a presence in the Mexican market this year after its first installation at the Viva Mexico Casino in Monterrey. “We plan to be as aggressive as possible,” said Maria Laura Casasola, the Italian firm’s General Manager for Latin America. Magic Dreams first entered the continent by establishing an office in Buenos Aires, the Argentinian capital.


INTELLIGENCE SERVICE Aristocrat Technologies is to build MicroStrategy’s business-intelligence systems into its Oasis 360 casino- management product. Adding MicroStrategy’s capabilities will give casino managers better reporting, data analysis, and predictive modelling of customer behaviour, the firm says.


POKER POT The World Series of Poker Europe returns to Harrah’s Entertainment’s Casino at the Empire in London from 14 to 28 September. The £10,000 ($15,000) final “will be the highest buy-in heads-up tournament ever contested in Europe and even higher than the Las Vegas counterpart”, according to managers of the Harrah’s-owned tournament.


OCTAVIAN’S FATE Novomatic subsidiary Austrian Gaming Industries (AGI) has bought assets of Octavian International, which entered administration in May. AGI Managing Director Jens Halle said: “Many AGI customers were also Octavian customers and it is to safeguard their requirements and to exceed their expectations that we have taken the decision to acquire these assets and intellectual properties.” Octavian developed games and gaming systems for casinos and arcades.


SHUFFLE PARTNER E-Service is now Shuffle Master’s service contractor for shufflers and chipping machines in the UK and Ireland.


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