Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2010 4 Editorial Inside Asian Gaming is published by Must Read Publications Ltd 8J Ed. Comercial Si Toi 619 Avenida da Praia Grande Macau Tel: (853) 2832 9980 For subscription enquiries, please email subs@asgam.com For advertising enquiries, please email ads@asgam.com or call: (853) 6646 0795 www.asgam.com Inside Asian Gaming is an official media partner of: http://www.gamingstandards.com Michael Grimes We crave your feedback. Please email your comments tomichael@asgam.com Publisher Kareem Jalal Director João Costeira Varela Editor Michael Grimes Business Development Manager Domingos Abecasis Contributors Desmond Lam, Steve Karoul I. Nelson Rose, Richard Marcus Shenée Tuck, James J. Hodl Andrew MacDonald William R. Eadington Graphic Designer Brenda Chao Photography Ike Cover photo and photo of Sheldon Adelson on page 7: Yonathan Weitzman / BluePress Talking Point The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, suggested Oscar Wilde, the Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. With Mr Wilde’s observation in mind, we present The Asian Gaming 50 – 2010 . It’s a list of the talented, the great (but the not necessarily saintly) in the regional gaming industry. Influence rather than pure financial muscle is the key criterion for inclusion on this year’s list. As a result, we have some new entries and some departures. Faces from Singapore’s new casino industry make their debut this year. Although modern casino gaming with its attendant luxury shopping, hotels and conference centres is new to Singapore, legal gambling houses are not. In the late 1820s, the British administrators of Singapore briefly legalised gambling ‘farms’ to raise tax. In 1826 alone they brought in £37,000 a year. That’s the equivalent of about £30 million today based on average earnings inflation. Gambling in Macau first became regulated about 25 years after Singapore’s short-lived 19th century experiment. And yet Macau today could hardly be described as amature gaming market. Until Sands Macao opened in 2004, it was mainly for high rollers with only a nod to the mass market. The growth in particular of the mass segment means Macau has probably altered more in the last eight years than it did in the previous 80. Any Macau-born octogenarian exile revisiting the city in 1962, the first year of Stanley Ho’s gambling monopoly, would easily have recognised the basic layout of the place from their childhood in the late 19th century. Any 80-year-old coming back home in 2010 after a lifetime away would be utterly lost. Add to that the technological phenomenon known as the Internet and the way it’s stimulated the development of online betting and gambling in the region, and its clear that the international and multi-ethnic nature of The Asian Gaming 50 – 2010 is a mirror of our rapidly changing times. Oscar Acceptance One noticeable feature of The Asian Gaming 50 – 2010 is how few women are on it. There are only four females on an index of 50 names. We don’t wish to be churlish and diminish the achievement of the men who did make this year’s rankings, but it’s not unreasonable to hope that on next year’s we might have more female faces. Women are already prominent at mid-level in casino management in Macau and Singapore, in supplier companies serving all the region’s markets and in Macau junkets. Women players are certainly very visible at the tables as well as the slots on the main gaming floors of the casinos in the two jurisdictions, even if there are fewer female big spenders than men in the high roller rooms. More women in gaming company boardrooms will mean more powerful advocacy at the top of the decision making chain for roughly half the industry’s consumers. It’s worked for American Express, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson, so why shouldn’t it work for the Asian gaming industry?Women made up 44.1% of the near one million visitor arrivals to Singapore in June, according to Singapore Tourism Board. Women may also be a less erratic source of casino revenue than men. To quote Oscar Wilde a final time: “Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”