NEWS Macau, Vegas, PA: the good news


For the SAR, double-digit growth is business as usual. But for Vegas, less bad feels really pretty good


Nobody’s pretending that the bad times are entirely behind us. But there was modest good news for the two gaming capitals of Las Vegas and Macau this summer. “Modest”, of course, is comparative. Macau’s August


revenue jump of 40 per cent on the same month in 2009 would be cause to crack out the champagne in most markets. But it’s a lowish increase for the Chinese special administrative region (SAR); over the first eight months of the year, for example, revenue grew by a much heftier 63 per cent. Much of that is believed to be the doing of high rollers


and of Chinese visitors, who make up an increasingly large share of Macau’s customer base. But two of the biggest beneficiaries are American: Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, the major casino operators in the SAR. The news for Sands and Wynn – along with the other big


Las Vegas operators, MGM and Harrah’s – was not so great at home, though it could have been worse. Visitor numbers to Vegas jumped in July, rising 4.7 per cent on July 2009 to more than 3.3m individuals: the largest monthly hike in nearly five years, caused partly by swelling convention crowds. But though they’re coming, it seems they’re not


spending as freely as before. One vivid indicator of the new parsimony: more customers are opting for the few hours’ drive from southern California, while fewer are flying into McCarran International Airport. And what they are spending seems to be going mostly


on the Strip, where revenue was unchanged from 2009. Casino takings in other parts of Las Vegas were dramatically down – a sign that the locals aren’t gambling – as they were in South Lake Tahoe and, to a less painful


extent, in other parts of Nevada. Indeed, the state as a whole saw revenue down 4.9 per cent, and the detail of that decline supports the theory that locals are staying away from casinos. Slots, although they still account for about half of


Nevada gaming revenue, were down 9.1 per cent, surely attributable to the disappearance of the high-frequency, low-stakes players who live in the area. By contrast, table games were up 3.5 per cent. And, as in Macau, it seems Asian players helped that figure grow, with their favoured Baccarat a big contributor to the revenue increase. Table games (but probably not Asian gamers) were good


news for Pennsylvania, too. Legalised earlier this year, they’ve already created 4000 jobs in the state, and early figures show them adding appreciably to casinos’ bottom lines: for example, Rivers Casino, which has 85 tables, took gross revenue of just over $3m in the first 24 days that they were operational. Yet Kevin O’Toole, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania


Gaming Control Board, cautioned: “While the implementation of table games created a significant patron traffic increase in July, it is too early to draw any conclusions on these numbers or the effect of table games on slot-machine gaming.” It doesn’t look catastrophic, however. At those


Pennsylvanian casinos which were open in August 2009, slot revenues a year later had climbed 2.6 per cent, although individual locations reported varying fortunes for the month. Worst-off of the four losers was The Meadows


Racetrack and Casino, with revenue down nearly 11.5 per cent, while the biggest of the four winners was Parx Casino at Philadelphia Park Racetrack, where revenue grew by more than 12 percent. By Macau standards, perhaps, that growth is less than


modest – paltry, even. But as Las Vegas’s recent experience shows, any figure preceded by a plus sign is welcome in today’s US gaming market.


G2E rejigs dates, moves to new venue


Vegas and Macau expos shift; London event talks big numbers


If 2011’s G2E trade fair in Las Vegas is already in your diary, it’s time for some crossing-out. The American Gaming Association and Reed Exhibitions,


which run the annual event, have moved it ahead by more than a month, and are also switching its location to the Sands Expo and Convention Center; this year will be the last G2E in its current Las Vegas Convention Center home, and the last with a Novemberdate. Among the reasons for the date shift, according to the


organisers, is creation of a bigger gap between major exhibitions – doubtless a reference to London’s ICE (back to its old name after a couple of years under the moniker IGE), held in late January. In 2011, G2E Las Vegas will be held 4-6 October, while


G2E Asia in Macau will be on 8-9 June. In 2012, the Macau dates also come back a couple of weeks, to 22-24 May, while the Vegas event is 2-4 October. And in 2013, Vegas is scheduled for 24-26 September, with Macau running 21-23 May. For its part, ICE – which takes place 25-27 January – is


trumpeting the support of the European Casino Association as well as Novomatic, which had been rumoured to be pulling out. Said Show Director Kate Chambers: “Just 16 pioneer


companies exhibited in 1991; in January there will be over 400 travelling to London from all over the world. You can only achieve this level of growth by working with the industry and investing heavily in a marketing and communications programme which in the last decade has helped to attract 172,114 buyers to ICE from 180 territories, eclipsing both G2E Las Vegas and G2E Asia as the most international exhibition on the gaming calendar.”


INBRIEF


NO THANKS The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association is opposed to casinos in the country. President Colin Jordan said: “It is possible that some visitors would love to smoke everywhere in Barbados, but we have essentially said when you get to Barbados you have to look out for the locals. We don’t believe a person who wants to enjoy the Barbadian experience will decide not to come because we don’t offer casino gambling.” However, he added that he hadn’t polled the association’s members on the issue lately.


VIEWS, PLEASE The UK’s Gambling Commission is conducting a review of its rules covering casino games, and is seeking comments from the industry by 24 November.


POP The Gran Scala gaming and leisure development project in Spain was “a big balloon that burst”, according to a politician in the community of Aragon. Jose Ignacio Senao added that “we have been fooled, all people of Aragon have been fooled”, and said that proposed replacements for Gran Scala were even worse ideas.


ANCHORS AWEIGH Goa’s seven operators of floating casinos are to move their vessels into new berths on the River Mandovi, after missing a 2009 deadline to relocate to Aguada Bay.


NEW NAME Hermes SoftLab, the supplier of gaming software, has been renamed ComTrade – already the name of its parent company.


PERMITS PLEASE The Mayor of Benidorm wants regulators to let hotels in the Spanish resort operate casinos.


SPORTS SEEKERS British Internet users searched heavily for sports-betting Websites over the summer, thanks to the World Cup and Wimbledon, but searches for Poker, Bingo and casino games were less popular than before, according to marketing agency Greenlight. However, Poker-related terms remained the most popular of all gaming searches. When users searched for casinos, 888.com was the most common top-place result.


8 OCTOBER 2010


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