Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | October 2008 Eight to Watch and was modified in 1965. The law allowed “special” games to be played in gambling houses by foreigners. A lottery also was launched, in large part to finance social causes. In 1963 the first casino opened in Opatija in present day Croatia, followed the same year by a casino at the Palace Hotel in the Slovenian coastal town of Portoroz. By the end of the 1980s there were 21 casinos operating under a blend of European organization and Marxist principles. Casinos were state-owned and managed by their workers.They were generally in larger hotels and operated only in evening and early morning hours.Play was restricted to holders of foreign passports from non-Communist countries and was conducted in Western currencies. Gaming floors were small, most less than 5,000 square feet and with fewer than 10 table games and only a handful of slot machines.The largest casino,at Portoroz, had 36 tables and 150 slots. But then a new nation called for new rules for casinos. Yugoslaviawas broken up after the death of Tito in 1980, and Slovenia’s independence was formalized in 1992 with recognition by the European Union and membership in the United Nations. Slovenia joined the EU in 2004 and in 2007 adopted the euro. A new Gaming Act passed in 1995 confined all gambling activity to the lottery and to two types of casinos.Up to 15 major casinos were authorized. These facilities could have as many games as allowed by their applications and concession grants. The law also called for as many as 45 machine gaming venues, each having between 50 and 200 devices.An Office for Gaming Supervision was created within theMinistry of Financewith thepower to grant licenses and oversee and regulate operations. To date, 16 casino concessions and 41 machine gaming concessions have been granted. Of the major casinos, eight are under the ownership and control of Hoteli Igralnice Turizem (Hotels Casinos and Tourism) Group, or HIT, a public corporation with 60 percent of its shares owned by government entities — 20 percent by municipalities, 20 percent by a federal government corporation which controls funds used to privatize former nationalized industries and 20 percent by a public employee pension fund. HIT has two of its casinos in the city of Nova Gorica. These are the most successful of all the casinos in Slovenia, having a market share of 45 percent. The casinos are in the Perla and Park hotels. Perla is one of the largest casino complexes in Europe with more than 1,100 slot machines and 90 tables as well as bingo games. The smaller Park Hotel (with 100 rooms) offers 789 slots and 42 tables and bingo. Other HIT properties are smaller. The company also has two slots-only venues as well as several hotels and restaurants.The The beautiful city of Ljubljana 38