Inside Asian Gaming

25 (-) Frank McFadden President, Joint Ventures and Business Developments Sociedade de Jogos de Macau S.A. “He asked me.” That’s what Frank McFadden has said to journalists when they query why this Irish former professional rugby player—with a passing resemblance to current England rugby centre and royal spouse Mike Tindall—decided to go and work for the ‘King of Gambling’, Stanley Ho. Mr McFadden, President, Joint Ventures and Business Developments, for Sociedade de Jogos de Macau S.A., added some telling detail in one interview. “He [Dr Ho] realised that SJM needed to change”. “I liked the challenge of taking this company from where it was going—which was a position of some suffering in relation to the liberalisation of the market—and making it a competitor, someone to be feared.” Mr McFadden is diplomatic enough not to take too much of the credit for helping to make SJM “someone to be feared”. He is and will always be to some extent an outsider in what is arguably the most‘Chinese’of all the Macau gaming operators. In the former Soviet Russia, ‘Kremlinologist’ was a term coined to describe analysts occupied with guessing what was happening inside the Russian government. ‘SJMolgist’ might be used to describe those non-Chinese trying to guess what goes on in SJM. But Mr McFadden is still there after nearly five years, so he must be doing something right. And nearly a decade after Macau market liberalisation, SJM remains the largest operator by gross gaming revenue (GGR). Sceptics like to point out that because there are so many ‘satellite’ properties—casinos using an SJM licence but owned by a third party—the SJM revenue figures are misleading. That’s because the company doesn’t get the same cut as from its directly managed venues (often having to pay for dealing staff and other overheads, although that business model has been changing in recent years). Yet the company has maintained its market lead on GGR while its capital spending has been only a fraction of what LVS shelled out. Grand Lisboa and Casino Oceanus, the two SJM ‘core’ properties opened since 2007, cost in total well under US$1 billion. The Venetian Macao alone will have cost LVS US$2.4 billion once it’s paid for. Mr McFadden’s most important job in the next few years is likely to be assisting in the planning and execution of an expected