THE HIPPODR STATESIDE OME CASINO


Casino International: Going back to 10 years before you opened, what was the investment to get to the stage of opening? Simon Thomas: Over £45m. We were very reliant on getting it open and getting it cash positive quickly.


CI: What was the period like just before you were able to open? ST: We were cash positive in about eight months which was important. We opened in July 2012, and the first six to eight months were just a blur. It was organised chaos but we had 400 willing and enthusiastic staff. We had far more customers than we were anticipating, we had a building which we hadn’t learned to use properly, and we had systems we hadn’t bedded in. It was some time around early Spring 2013 that everything started to come into place. We were over the hump.


CI: Looking back at your expectations at the time, do you think the experience and business has met or exceeded your expectations? ST: Both have blown expectations out of the water. Our year-one projection was 12,000 customers per week and our year-two projection was 18,000 customers per week. We were thinking of a new style of casino with a combination of bars, restaurants, entertainment and gambling but it was all quite naïve in terms of aspirations. When we had 18,000 customers on week four, we knew we were onto something. We’ve got one of the best steakhouses, roof terraces and poker rooms in London, a world-class show with Hollywood superstars involved, relationships with NFL teams, world-class superstars perform e.g. Prince and Dire Straits, and we’re frequently in the worldwide press and media. But there too, we’re different; we don’t just talk about gambling or hospitality to the media, we engage politically, we also fight for the neighbourhood because we represent a significant chunk of the West End entertainment experience. I could also never have anticipated becoming such a central part of the local community, the business eco-system and dare I say the entertainment scene in London. It sounds naïve now but that was never the expectation, we never knew where it could go or how quickly it would take to get there. We knew we were on an exciting journey, we would find a way to get through any problems and take advantage of any opportunities.


CI: We first spoke 12 years ago when the project was kicking off. I looked at the reasoning behind your license application and it was very bold; there were already 27 licensed casinos within three square miles of Central London. To get a license you had to make an application to explain you were fulfilling a need that was not currently being met, which in an international city like London is difficult… ST: There were two licensing thresholds. We could either show we could bring something new to the party and we were doing something others were not, or we were meeting an unmet demand. We won our licensing appeal on both counts. I think we have demonstrated we are meeting an unmet demand given we now have one third


of the admissions into London casinos, and our mean average monthly visits are around 30,000. We recently crossed 14 million customer visits so when you take into account we were closed for over a year that’s quite a chunk of people. Without question we have demonstrated we are doing something that no one else is doing. No other casino has the myriad different activities we deliver or even has a theatre within it, let alone having a theatre with a show in partnership with Channing Tatum.


CI: Going back 10 years before you opened, what were the early evolutions of the business, the building, and the offering? ST: We opened with our best guess at what was best for the building; we had baccarat in the basement, roulette and blackjack on the ground floor, a restaurant we were billing as an American brasserie with a British twist and we had some pretty nice bars. When we opened, we hadn’t even finished building let alone started correcting and improving the mistakes the architects had made. The systems were not tested, the staff were not used to working with each other, the customers had no clue where anything was, and it really was chaos during the first few months. We open 24/7, and I recall Christmas Day on the first


year of opening (Christmas Day being the one day we have to close by law) thinking this is fantastic, we can


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