Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 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) 6680 9419 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 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 Silence—Not So Golden Macau, like the motherland China, is a quota-driven society. In Macau, reams of statistics on everything from gross gaming revenue to average length of visitor stay are prepared by civil servants and then earnestly pored over by government and media alike. No doctrinal conference of the Catholic Church ever paid more reverence to the articles of Christian faith than does Macau to its tourism statistics. But when it comes to the big picture stuff—how strategic decisions are made in Macau and public policy is formulated on things such as land and gaming development rights— silence reigns. Facts are few and far between. Instead, decisions are delivered miraculously, fully formed (or sometimes half-baked) like smoke out of a Vatican chimney following the election of a new pope by a conclave of cardinals. That’s what seems to have happened in the row over Cotai plots 7 and 8 and the government’s strangely worded letter saying Las Vegas Sands Corp’s right to the land is “not approved”. Then, when the market has had a few days to digest the latest promulgation from the Chief Executive’s office, and the awkward questions start to flood in, it’s left to public officials lower down the pecking order to explain or otherwise interpret what the ‘policy’means. They stand blinking under the powerful lights of television cameras, like rabbits caught in car headlamps, loyally trying to interpret the orders from above and hoping for the sake of their own careers they don’t get it hopelessly wrong and drop their superiors deeper in the mire. An American journalist’s description of Macau as“a casino designed as a nation”has never seemed more appropriate. Except it seems in Macau’s case, the casino management is taking its leadership lessons from Donald Trump rather than Kirk Kerkorian. Eventually, Las Vegas Sands Corp will probably swallow whatever pill it is asked to take in relation to its Cotai land rights. It’s making too much money from its existing operations to press the nuclear button in its relations with the Macau government. But Macau emerges from this fiasco with very little credit in the wider world. No one would suggest LVS Chairman Sheldon Adelson is a natural stand-in for the jolly grandpa in the Werther’s Original candy commercials. But he is a businessman of international standing who’s investing the best part of US$7 billion in Macau’s infrastructure. He’s surely entitled to better treatment in Macau than he’s receiving under the current dispensation.