Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2011 54 contacts in Malaysia. And we’ll eventually catch up and probably that market will be split, but I think we’ll continue to dominate the mass market. There are a few things you changed in terms of your strategy in Singapore. It started, you were going for a very baccarat mix with the tables, and now you realised that roulette is more important, things like that. What have you changed in Singapore in terms of your strategy? The mass market floor in Singapore constantly changes. One of the things we learned from Genting was the electronic table games, which they put, and the stadium table games. We didn’t know about that. We saw that there and we immediately ordered them and put them in. They’ve been very good. But we’ve made over two thousand changes in the last six months on our floor—changing machines, changing different slot machines, changing tables, putting new games in. Most people don’t realize that there is both an art and science to the gaming business. Not just getting people in there to play, you have to put the right game in the right place so that revenue per square foot is maximised . And we have some very, very good people in Singapore that do that. Of course, you are very willing to learn and adapt. Well, I hope so. If we don’t learn, we don’t adapt and we don’t continually improve, you end up in a status quo environment. When you’re in the kind of business we’re in and we’re a public company, we can’t be in status quo. Status quo is the prescription for failure. We have to continually grow and change. In Singapore because of the entry levy , which is S$100 a day, that was something that people thought would dissuade locals from coming, but it doesn’t seem to have deterred them at all really. We didn’t concern ourselves with the entry fees and I don’t think anyone else did either. The entry fee does prevent the very low income person from coming in. and I think that’s very important. I think casinos need to be careful not to attract the kind of people that can’t afford to come in. The people who would normally play a lottery for instance, where they can play pennies or dollars, can take chances on a lottery. But I think when you come into a large casino like ours or Genting, their Resort World, the fee structure only inhibits those low end people. It doesn’t inhibit people from coming in for an evening of entertainment. So I like it. Frankly, I would be surprised if when we expand in other countries in Asia that we don’t have an entry fee in almost every country, if not every country. There is some speculation that the Singapore government might crack down a bit more and maybe try more to limit locals’ access to the casinos. One thing was they stopped the bussing of people from the so called ‘Heartland, which is, obviously, again it’s more lower income people. Do you think they are mainly interested in preventing lower income people from coming or do you think they might also try to have more blanket measures to prevent all Singaporeans from coming? We are basically told that as long as only about 30% of the people coming in are Singaporean, then it shouldn’t be a problem. If the amount of Singaporean attendance gets much higher than that, there may be some cause for concern. But to this day, only about three percent of the population of Singapore has ever played in a casino. Is that 30% thing unspoken? It’s not published but it has been talked about. That’s what our numbers have been roughly 30% Singaporean. That doesn’t seem to cause any problem. You are always going to have in the casino business some people who over-play. That’s part of the business, but the great majority of people can control themselves and I don’t think we’re creating more poverty in Singapore because of our presence. But if that were to happen, the government would have every right and every reason to come in and try to restrict play. Governments across Asia do not like their locals playing as a rule. So there are casinos in Vietnam and South Korea, but in general they’re off limits to locals. You’ve said that you’d be interested in expanding into those markets, but only if the governments reserve that policy and allow locals to play. Do you see that happening anytime soon? It is true that we said that. In South Korea, there is one casino that gets local business. That casino does 90%t of the revenue of all the casinos in Korea. One of seventeen. Yes, one of seventeen casinos. In Vietnam locals don’t play. Our Landmarks newand old—Marina Bay Sands as seen fromSingapore’sMerlion Park INSIGHTS