Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | July 2011 26 INSIGHTS Cats,Hats & Bats—the latest Shuffle Master slots on display at the G2E Asia Expo, held June 8th to 9th at Venetian Macao part of our business. When I was with Bally, it was very small. Do you have any predictions for the expansion of gaming in Asia? I don’t see Asia not growing. I think Asia is in its infancy. Macau is a phenomenal example. Look at 2003 to today. I mean, that’s 8 years. It’s amazing. What do you have in store to keep up with the evolving market? More of our money is being spent on R&D, which you have to do. We continue to evolve with our shufflers. We just had a new one released. Not only does it shuffle 8 decks of cards, but it also recognises the cards as it shuffles them. If someone changes a card or if someone takes out a card, it will tell the dealer. The speed of these things, that’s an investment in technology. On the proprietary tables, we continue to buy new games, develop new games, bring out new games. In electronic tables, we are doing a major overhaul of our sector there. And we’ve just invested in a new Equinox cabinet. In every sector we’re investing, plus we’ve started investing in online gaming. Our brands, Three Card Poker, Ultimate Texas Hold’em, are very popular games, so they’re ideally suited for the online space. In fact, some of them are already out there, so we’re going to license them and then we’re going to bring out our own. Intellectual property is a very important part of your business. How do you go about protecting it in Asia? It’s one of the big struggles that I’ve had because I’m very familiar with intellectual property. Obviously, Shuffle Master has probably more and richer and more unique [intellectual property] than any other company I’ve worked with. Its trademarks and patents are registered in many, many countries. But when you come into a market like Macau, for example, where there’s really never been proper testing of patents, I think we’ve been outplayed by a couple of players and I’m going to change that. I’m going to make sure I play the same rules that everyone else does and abide by, obviously, but protect my intellectual property. The Shuffle Master stand at last month’s G2E Asia Expo