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HIPPODROME CASINO


working is that more people are learning to play casino games online, and are very familiar with a screen-based approach to gambling. The electronic offering development has gone far beyond Roulette, there’s so much exciting product out there. We’ve been out to Macau and to Las Vegas to see how they do things; the Chinese seem to be much better than the Americans with their embracing of technology and arena-style layouts. It’s very impressive. We intend to pick the best of the best on that side, and in the live gaming side, and hopefully get the best of both markets.


CI: Have you had any surprises in the construction apart from the banister that was found? ST: Nothing major – we’ve made tweaks around the plans depending on what we’ve found, some of which we were quite pleased to find. The poker deck on the top floor, which has a stunning view, was an area weren’t sure we could use when we started stripping out. The ceiling recess is much higher than we could see before, so we found a lot more space than we thought we had.


CI: I can’t help but think everything is coming


together really quite beautifully for you… Things like the building next-door becoming available, for example. ST: The adage that the harder you work, the luckier


you get certainly comes into play – we have a good team, working very hard. We feel we have timed the entry into the market fairly well, being the last licence granted in London. We can take full advantage of the deregulation, optimise the building and its layout to make the most of it – and we can look at how others have dealt with the smoking ban, for example, or open door policy, and learn from that. The credit crunch has, from our point of view been almost fortunate, because we’ve been able to make good deals with contractors and builders, and we’ve had the advantage of acquiring the building next- door as well. If the economy could wake up by September that would be even better… The economy is of course affecting the main four


casino operators in London as well, they have some debt problems either from their backers or their own funding issues, so they’re not able to invest in the market as much as they should be, and they’ve cut back on staff in some cases. It improves our competitive position, but we’d prefer an environment where the competition is stronger and is spending money to help drum up business for all of us.


CI: You and your father are financing this


project yourselves with no bank backing – is that an option for the future? ST: We’re thinking about taking bank finance as an option. When we started the project in July 2009, the chance of getting bank financing was between zero and not much more than that, and we didn’t need it; we always said we’d review it as the project went on. The whole credit market has changed now, and also


26 JANUARY 2011


the risk profile of the building. Back then if I’d gone to a bank and asked if they wanted to invest in a project where they’re digging down into the unknown, it’s unlikely I would have come away with investment. The actual profile of the development has changed as the risky part is now out of the way. So we’re sizing up whether to fund it with equity or with bank finance going forward.


CI: What’s going to be different to the Empire casino, which is just a short distance away? ST: A lot, we hope. In terms of gaming product, a


Roulette table is a Roulette table – but that’s like saying a steak’s a steak. The atmosphere you eat that steak in gives you a completely different experience. The Empire is a good club, but it’s basement and sub- basement so it can feel like a nightclub almost. They are by far the busiest casino in the country, their restaurant is fine, there’s a lot of positives there. But we feel we have a beautiful building with a much bigger frontage to exploit – the whole of the outside of our building will look like a casino, we will take full advantage of that. You’ll walk in to our casino at ground floor level, and we’ll offer a very broad range of games – plus we’ll have cabaret in the 200-seat theatre, and a separate poker room – but we can use the cabaret theatre as a tournament space so it need not interrupt the day-to-day gambling. They’re part of a large group but we’re a standalone operation so we can take service standards and indeed the overall experience to a whole new level.


In terms of gaming product, a Roulette table is a Roulette table – but that’s like saying a steak’s a steak.


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