NEWS Servicing the international VIP:
Crown takes control of Aspinalls From Mayfair to Melbourne to Macau, the Australian operator is building up its casino portfolio
Itinerant Australians tending London bars have long been a cliche of the British capital, even if it's one rarely reflected in reality today.
But the latest incursion from Down Under into the London evening scene is a lot more serious: Australian operator Crown has acquired the Aspinalls Club in Mayfair, one of only a handful of West End casinos, for £36m. Crown already owned half of the club through its joint-
venture stake in the Aspinalls Group, which it co-owns with the Aspinall family. Now, it plans to use the London venue to serve its international VIP clientele. Aspinalls was founded by the colourful zoo owner John Aspinall, who used gaming revenue to fund his conservationist ventures.
The Aspinalls Group, meanwhile, continues to operate casinos under the Aspers brand in the decidedly less posh surroundings of Newcastle, Northampton and Swansea. Crown is busy at home, too. It is continuing development at the Crown Melbourne and Burswood resorts, including a new precinct in Melbourne's Crown Entertainment Complex. The ground-floor extension will include extra table games, permitted under a 2009 licence negotiation with state authorities, as well as restaurants, cafes, bars and entertainment areas. And on the third floor, Melbourne will get a new bar and lounge dubbed Club 23. Melbourne has 2500 slots and approval to operate 500 tables. Crown's gaming floor is also being enlarged in Burswood, a suburb of Perth, to include new VIP gaming salons. Crown is also a major shareholder in Melco Crown, the operator of City of Dreams in Macau, and has stakes in online operator Betfair Australia as well as US firms such as Cannery Casino Resorts, Caesars, and Gateway.
City of even more dreams
An artificial beach and wave pool may help to attract the non-gamer to Macau’s latest giant project
It may sound like the ultimate contradiction in terms, but Galaxy Entertainment Group believes it has identified a lucrative additional market for its new Galaxy Macau casino: people who don’t gamble.
Galaxy is aiming the $1.9bn venue, which opened mid- May on the Cotai Strip close to Melco Crown’s City of Dreams and Las Vegas Sands’ Venetian, at three distinct groups.
As well as the high rollers coming in from mainland China and the mass market of lower-stake gamblers,
Galaxy hopes its expected 30,000 daily visitors will include vacationers tempted by its non-gaming facilities. As well as retail and more than 50 restaurants and bars
– around half of them serving Asian food – these include live stages, a spa, and the Grand Resort Deck, complete with sandy beach and 4000-square-meter wave pool. Future plans for Galaxy Macau include a nine-screen 3D multiplex cinema.
The holiday market will also be served by the three hotel brands present in the complex, Banyan Tree, Okura and Galaxy, with a total of around 2200 rooms. Galaxy is wooing the more conventional consumer market for casinos, meanwhile, with a 300m-long main gaming hall housing around 1000 slots and 450 tables. More than half of the slot floor is given over to Aristocrat Technologies’ best-performing Asian titles.
In Vegas, past glories are not enough to save Sahara
Coincidence, or a poignant reminder of the shifting balance of economic superpower? Just a day after Galaxy Entertainment Group opened the doors of its new casino mega-complex in Macau, one of the most venerable names in Las Vegas gaming put up the shutters forever. The 49-year-old Sahara, opened in Vegas’s rat-pack-and-mafiosi era and the scene of performances from the likes of
Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and The Beatles, had finally been deemed economically unviable earlier in the year by owner SBE Entertainment.
SBE has not decided what to do next with the property, which includes a 1700-room hotel, and says it hasn’t ruled out
a renovation and reopening, although Vegas commentators suspect demolition is a more likely fate. More than 1000 employees have lost their jobs, outstanding reservations have been transferred to Circus Circus, and the empty Sahara now joins the recently-bankrupt Riviera and the stalled Fontainebleau construction project as a symbol of failing fortunes at the north end of the Vegas Strip.
INBRIEF
CASH CHECKING Casino di Campione in Switzerland is now using MEI’s Cashflow SC note validator in all new and refurbished slots. The venue, near Lake Lugano, has 650 machines from Aristocrat, Atronic, Golden Games, IGT, Konami, Magic Dreams, Unidesa and WMS.
NO THANKS Shareholders in Britain’s Rank Group have rejected a £585m takeover bid from the Hong Kong- based Guoco conglomerate, which had already amassed around 41% of Rank. The gaming group’s board said the offer “significantly undervalued” Rank.
NEVADA HEALTHIER Nevada casino revenue in March was up 12.9% on the previous year. On the Las Vegas Strip, slot takings were marginally down but the amount bet on table games rose by 8.1%. In Louisiana, meanwhile, April revenue crept up 1% year-on-year, with the lion’s share coming from the state’s 13 riverboat casinos.
SLAP ON THE WRIST Singapore’s Casino Regulatory Authority has fined Resorts World Sentosa about $425,000 for four breaches of gaming rules.
MACAU MADNESS Melco Crown Entertainment, operator of the City of Dreams casino in Macau, grew first- quarter revenue by 48%. It outperformed the Macau gaming sector as a whole, which swelled 43% in the same period. The City of Dreams location accounted for nearly 60% of Melco Crown’s total revenue, with the company attributing its revenue growth to “more aggressive marketing initiatives to draw important VIP customers and increase brand awareness in mainland China”. But it now faces more competition from the Galaxy.
EASTERN PROMISE Two bidders have emerged for the large casino licence in Great Yarmouth, the resort town on England’s eastern coast: Pleasure and Leisure, which wants to build a casino as part of a larger harbourside leisure development, and Patrick Duffy, owner of Great Yarmouth’s existing Palace Casino.
6 JUNE 2011
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