Interactive CHINA ONLINE & MOBILE
Westerners and the Chinese is that for Westerners, gambling is about entertainment and calculating probabilities. For the Chinese it's a battle with destiny."
Many studies have shown that Chinese gamers have a higher illusion of control than Western gamers, believing that they can control the out- come of events in baccarat, blackjack, sic bo or lottery, for example. These psychological differ- ences help explain why the Chinese gamble: “In Las Vegas, people gamble as a diversion,” says Manuel Neves, director of the Macau govern- ment's gaming department, adding “in Macau, they gamble to fight; it's Chinese.”
In Macau, this attitude pays: it has more revenue per table than anywhere else in the world, and 91 percent of their gross gaming revenue comes from baccarat alone. Macau’s well-heeled clientele largely consists of hard-core players on junkets and day-trippers from Hong Kong. The resort- style casinos of Vegas are unlikely to interest them, and the notion that they should bring their families is often met with incredulity. They want to play: half of the average person’s holiday budg-
et in Macau goes on betting – far higher than Vegas. Even in the mass market the average bet is over $100, with an average gaming spend of over $650 per holiday.
The focus on tables might make China sound tra- ditional in comparison to the West, but when it comes to online gaming it is leading the way. China is well-established as the world’s largest smartphone market — but what exactly do Chinese consumers use their mobile devices for? According to the China Internet Network Information Center, more than 500 million people in China access the internet via their smart- phones, while 44.9 percent of all smartphone users play mobile games on their devices.
The mobile-gaming market has exploded in China, with revenue expected to grow 93 percent to US$2.9 billion in 2014, and that expansion is likely to continue at a compound annual growth rate of 37.6 percent from 2013 to 2018. Indeed, Newzoo estimates that the global mobile gaming market will reach US$23.9 billion by 2016, repre- senting a 25 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over 2013-16. Of that total market,
the Asia Pacific region is expected to have a 48.4 percent market share, ahead of North America on 25 percent.
Even if you have no plans to move into the Chinese market right now, Chinese gaming has already transformed the domestic market. London casinos are changing their habits to reach out to Chinese gamers, and the UK Gambling Commission says baccarat spending has trebled over the last four years. “A few years ago casinos were very much made up of super-rich Middle East customers playing roulette,” says Erica Young, the Commission’s casino expert. “The big growth now is the Far East, mainland Chinese and baccarat.”
Companies cannot afford to ignore the differences between Western and Chinese gaming habits, and they really cannot afford to underestimate the influence it will have on our gambling culture and behavior on a global level - we can already see that what happens in China won’t stay in China. So, although it may seem like a long and compli- cated path to mastering the market, it’s a far more risky decision to ignore it.
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