The sixth annual ranking of the industry’s most influential people sponsored by:
The past year has highlighted several fallacies with regards the Asian gaming space. The main ones are that Macau will always remain the No. 1 gaming destination for Chinese, whose appetite to gamble is insatiable, and that Macau’s growth will motor on ad infinitum on the back of oodles of still-untapped demand from mainland China.
There’s a danger Macau is starting to seem passé for many affluent Chinese travelers. Indeed, Macau’s very relevance to China’s next generation is in doubt. According to a study published in 2013 by management consultancy McKinsey & Company that’s come to be considered the definitive overview on the subject, the younger cohort within China’s middle class, who today are teenagers and people in their early 20s, were “born after the mid-1980s and raised in a period of relative abundance. Their parents, who lived through years of shortage, focused primarily on building economic security. … But [they] were born after Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the southern region—the beginning of a new era of economic reform and of China’s opening up to the world. They are confident, independent minded, and determined to display that independence through their consumption. Most of them are the only children in their families because when they were born, the government was starting to enforce its one-child policy quite strictly.”
It’s this rising new generation that will drive the coming surge in Chinese outbound travel—brokerage CLSA predicts outbound departures from China will double to 200 million by 2020. “Explosive projected growth in outbound Greater China travel numbers offers immense opportunity for countries to benefit from Chinese tourists’ desire for new experiences—from sightseeing to food, to hotels, to gaming and shopping. Tourists will become increasingly savvy, independent and demand high quality experiences and service,” writes CLSA analyst Aaron Fischer.
Perhaps in anticipation of the influence of China’s new consumers, despite the current pervading atmosphere of gloom, massive new gaming resort capacity continues to be built around the region. The bulk of development is still centered on Macau and the Cotai strip as the city’s operators not only seek to reignite the market and prevent players from migrating abroad, but also shift their focus away from the moribund VIP segment to the higher margin mass market by providing more expansive non-gaming offerings at their upcoming properties.
Big projects are also afoot in the region’s other gaming jurisdictions now that Macau’s appeal to Chinese players no longer appears unassailable. Competing resorts geared to Chinese players are opening up or are on the drawing boards from Manila to Brisbane, Vegas to Vladivostok and Incheon to the Great Barrier Reef.
So it is we bring you this year’s issue of Inside Asian Gaming dedicated to the men and women shaping the future of this most dynamic of the world’s gaming regions, with the established players working feverishly to maintain their positions and several new names pursuing greenfield ventures in emerging destinations. We hope you’ll find their stories as interesting as we do.
About the Title Sponsor
Scientific Games Corporation (NASDAQ: SGMS) is a leading developer of technology-based products and services and associated content for worldwide gaming, lottery and interactive markets. The company’s portfolio includes gaming machines, game content and systems; table games products and utilities; instant and draw-based lottery games; server-based lottery and gaming systems; sports betting technology; loyalty and rewards programs; and interactive content and services. For more information, please visit www.scientificgames.com.
