Inside Asian Gaming takes a look back at IAG EXPO, which continued the tradition of excellence established in recent years by adding the first ever IAG Exhibition to a week-long industry celebration at Manila’s Newport World Resorts.
The 2025 IAG EXPO represented the beginning of a new era for Inside Asian Gaming as we hosted our very first IAG Exhibition at Newport World Resorts (NWR), Manila, from 8 to 10 September.
The addition this year of the IAG Exhibition completed a quartet of important industry events that formed the week’s itinerary – joining the annual Manila After Dark, IAG Academy Summit and IAG Academy IR Awards that have been hosted at NWR’s Hilton Manila for the previous two years.
This year, all events at the IAG EXPO were relocated to the larger space of NWR’s Manila Marriott, with the exception of MAD which was held for the second year at Casa Buenas.
IAG EXPO will now be a regular fixture on the annual Asian gaming calendar with the venue already booked in for the next four years. Next year’s IAG EXPO will be held from 7 to 9 September at Marriott Manila, Newport World Resorts.
Kicking off the festivities with IAG ’s hugely popular social networking event, MAD attracted a new record attendance of more than 250 industry figures who enjoyed an evening of delectable Filipino canapes matched with free flow drinks and the company of peers old and new.
Kicking off the festivities with IAG ’s hugely popular social networking event, MAD attracted a new record attendance of more than 250 industry figures who enjoyed an evening of delectable Filipino canapes matched with free flow drinks and the company of peers old and new.
The inaugural IAG Exhibition debuted this year with 17 exhibitors who packed a punch well above their collective weight. IAG sends a huge thankyou to our Founder Exhibitors – headlined by none other than Light & Wonder, with an impressively expansive space covering their land-based slot machine business, their systems arm, and a dedicated iGaming zone to celebrate the company’s recent receipt of the first Philippines online supplier and aggregator license.
Other exhibitors included Aristocrat Gaming, ACP, Angel, Aruze, Cloudflare, CPI, IDX Games, JCM Global, LT Game, Mega Fortris, Newport World Resorts, NYCE, PAGCOR, Paltronics and Transact.
Attendees were also treated to a range of innovative stands to provide some relaxation and entertainment, including the Inside Asian Golf & Bar and, thanks to NWR, a shoeshine offering, shoulder massage and whisky tasting!
IAG expects the IAG Exhibition to continue to grow in the years ahead.
It was another record attendance at this year’s IAG Academy IR Awards, with 290 attendees enjoying a wonderful evening of entertainment while celebrating the best of the best. Unlike many other industry award ceremonies, the IAG Academy IR Awards is a true reflection of achievement, with a panel of 100 esteemed judges casting their votes. That means winners are not determined by who sponsored or exhibited at the event but by a genuine democratic vote!
A shout out to Hann Resorts’ Dennis Andreaci who received raucous applause when named this year’s Industry Legend, and to PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro H. Tengco who had the crowd in stitches with a highly entertaining appearance on stage to deliver the night’s biggest awards.
The IAG Academy Summit aims to provide true value to its attendees by thinking outside the box. That means speakers not seen at every industry trade show throughout the year and session topics that are specifically curated to address the issues impacting the industry right now.
This year’s Keynote Speakers were PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro H. Tengco and NWR President and CEO Nilo Thaddeus Rodriguez. The summit featured topics on remote gaming, smart gaming tables, IR design, casino optimization, the future of the Philippines, industry suppliers, how to leverage non-gaming to drive gaming, and foreigner-only casinos. There were also high-level presentations from former Marina Bay Sands President and CEO George Tanasijevich and Singapore legal mind Lau Kok Keng which kept the audience enthralled.
SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS
SESSION: BY DESIGN
Saving costs or spending more to drive revenue? That was the question posed to renowned casino and integrated resort architects Paul Heritakis and Joey Cruz on a panel titled, “By Design: How IR Buildings are Driving Revenue”
The answer was simple. While saving money presents a finite result, maximizing revenue is, theoretically at least, limitless.
“You have to drive revenue,” said Heretakis, Managing Director of WESTAR Architects. “I went out to dinner the other night in Las Vegas and I got this sad little plate of food on a big plate. So, I asked myself, ‘What came first? Nobody coming here or trying to save money? You try to save money and now nobody wants to show up!’
“It’s a value proposition. Wynn is the most expensive place out there and it’s doing phenomenally well. I know you read a lot of negative articles about Vegas right now with occupancy and everything else but that’s not the case with Wynn and it’s not the case with Venetian. They’re both delivering at a high-level value proposition that people want.”
On the initial design of an integrated resort, Cruz explained, “Every time you have a cost – whether it’s decorative or actually operational, back-of-house here or back-of-house there – it either increases or decreases your profitability, because the way you operate actually makes a difference.
“Our role as designers is to guide the owners, to make sure that money is spent well where it needs to be spent so that the revenue or the return on investment is there.”
SESSION: REMOTE GAMING
One of the most well-attended sessions of the IAG Academy Summit was titled “Remote Gaming: The Philippines’ New Battleground” where panelists asked whether a recent regulatory crackdown on the industry was really achieving desired results.
Evan Spytma, the CEO of Casino Plus in Clark, was particularly critical of a decision by the Philippines’ central bank to ban e-wallet providers from offering customers direct links to licensed gambling sites.
“What you’ve seen [with the central bank’s] blocking of GCash and Maya is an inability [by licensed operators] to market to the public,” Spytma said.
“Now you have all these operators saying, ‘Really? What’s the benefit [of being licensed]? I’m going to pay a 40% tax, for what?’
“That is what the government truly has to understand because they had been going in such a great direction. The illegal sites were all coming down. We had reached 50-50 in terms of legal sites versus illegal – and here we are.”
Spytma added that the blocking of GCash and Maya also ignored the fact that such platforms had already enforced a two-pronged Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process that provided enhanced protections for players utilizing licensed sites.
“And now what do we do? We block them – kick all the players out to the wolves. And they have no idea what is a legal site and what isn’t,” he said.
“We need to refocus and get back to focusing on the real channels that are safe for the players and can abide by all regulations.”
Light & Wonder’s Managing Director International, iGaming, Magdalena Podhorska-Okolow, admitted that the timing of the central bank’s decision was not ideal, given her company had just secured the Philippines’ first license as a supplier and aggregator for online operators.
“Our understanding was that even the regulated and licensed operators did have a portion of their revenue coming through these wallets,” she said.
“So, I guess for us as a new entrant, it’s a bit of a shame that now the pie is slightly reduced. At the same time, we’re happy when markets are regulated and that’s how we believe we grow sustainably as a company.
“It’s the only way forward so it’s not a huge surprise. The pie is a little bit smaller but it’s still a very, very interesting and sizeable market.”
SESSION: LEVERAGING NON-GAMING TO DRIVE GAMING
In a session titled, “Leveraging non-gaming to drive gaming”, Galaxy Entertainment Group’s Executive Vice President Hospitality, Roger Lienhard, noted that the optimization of casino resorts in 2025 requires close collaboration between casino staff and those overseeing an IR’s non-gaming attractions.
“Hospitality is the segment that helps the gaming guys,” Lienhard said. “The more engagement we have with the gaming guys together, the more successful we’re going to be as a team, and therefore when we have our brainstorm session, the focus on that gaming engagement with the non-gaming guys is so important to actually optimizing revenue on the gaming floor while supporting a better non-gaming business. This is the future if you really look at it.”
Dr Iwan Dietschi, Senior Vice President Hospitality at MGM China, said Macau’s IR operators had successfully recalibrated post-COVID to improve the customer experience.
“We all had enough time during [the pandemic] to really focus on what was going to happen when the customers came back and who those customers would be, so we spent the time very wisely ensuring it was not only a great experience but that we could delight the customers with a fresh look and fresh ideas. We looked at hospitality in terms of service: what do we need to do? What do we need to change? And what can we implement that we haven’t done before?”
Dr Dietschi added, “It’s all about a relationship [between gaming and non-gaming] to really understand and to execute not only what they expect us to do but more. It’s important that we are professional in how we operate the non-gaming aspect of the IR, the service element, and it’s critical that we focus together on a culture that engages the employees, that puts the employees in the center, and further that we can develop the employees in a way that they are competent, focused, excited, proactive, quality driven and business-focused.
“So, [non-gaming] is part of positioning the brand every day on a higher level by how we operate, how we engage, how we execute so as to ensure the customers eventually return because they want to be part of the MGM experience.”
