Inside Asian Gaming

October 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 47 Briefs A spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said it was impossible to track how much of the attention translated into actual Las Vegas visits. But a report commissioned by the authority says news coverage of an online campaign and a large ad in USA Today reached an estimated 154 million people. The report values the publicity at US$23 million. “God bless Prince Harry,”said LVCVA Board Chairman Tom Collins. “He made us a bunch of money.” The authority launched the campaign a few days after mobile phone pictures published on gossip site TMZ showed the naked prince cavorting with an unidentified woman during a game of strip billiards in Las Vegas. The satirical campaign “condemned” the leak, urging visitors to “know the code,” and warned them against violating the city’s “What happens here, stays here”mantra. PokerStars Will Deal in London PokerStars has concluded an agreement with London’s Hippodrome that will see the online gaming giant open its own branded poker room at the Leicester Square casino. PokerStars has taken an equity investment in the Hippodrome as part of the agreement. PokerStars will also provide poker for a future Hippodrome online casino site. In a separate deal, the Hippodrome is also partnering with Microgaming for the provision of online software for games run within the casino as part of a three-way joint venture, with PokerStars providing the poker and Microgaming the casino games under the Hippodrome brand. The famed Hippodrome was reopened three months ago after a £40 million renovation and now features a 90,000-square-foot casino on three levels, a two-tier smoking terrace, a cabaret theater, five bars and a restaurant. Slots Will Be Dinosaurs, Experts Say Instead of players sitting at banks of slot machines, they’ll be gambling on iPads installed in restaurants, bars and other parts of the casino, said experts speaking at the Global Gaming Expo held earlier this month in Las Vegas. Slot machines are going to be a thing of the past “within five years,” said some. “If we’re going to survive, we’ve got to change the way we do things,” said Deana Scott, marketing director for casino technology company Acres 4.0. “Over time, what we do now will become obsolete.” Experts said that a key factor driving the change will be price. An iPad currently costs around US$500 as opposed to $12,000-$15,000 or more for a slot machine. Isolation also is a problem, they said, with more and more people abandoning the seclusion of themachine gaming experience in favor of more social venues such as restaurants and nightclubs, which now bring in more revenue in US casinos than gambling. SteveWalther, vice president of marketing for Aruze Gaming, said that people no longer want to “sit in a dark corner like a mushroom”. The consensus of those who spoke at the show was that, moving forward, casinos hope to integrate more non-gaming types of amenities with gaming. They also predicted that competition in the future will not be coming from traditional gambling companies, but from technology companies worldwide. “WMS, IGT and Bally are seeing their biggest competition from Zynga and Facebook,” noted Kevin Parker of Acres 4.0. Anger Over Hungary’s Slot Ban The Hungarian parliament has adopted legislation that provides for a total ban of all gaming machines in the central European nation, the only exemptions being slots located in the country’s three casinos, which operate under a state-owned monopoly. The European Gaming and Amusement Federation, a Brussels- based trade group whose members include 23 national industry associations in 18 European countries, blasted the legislation as “extremely aggressive and anti-competitive”. “The Hungarian Government has completely blind-sided the industry and has left it no time to react,” the group said. Information provided by MSZSZ, a trade association representing Hungary’s machine gaming operators, shows that up to 40,000 people directly or indirectly employed by the country’s gaming and amusement industries could lose their jobs. This comes on top of the 20,000 people that Euromat estimates have already lost their jobs as a result of the government’s decision last November to increase the gaming tax. “TheHungarianGovernmenthasnotonlycompletelydisregarded constitutional and EU laws, as well as the European Convention of HumanRights, but has clearly failed tounderstand thebroader impact that its actions will have on society and the economy in Hungary and across Europe,” said Annette Kok, president of Euromat. She said the group will challenge the shutdown under both EU and Hungarian national laws. “There are clear precedents which will be used to ensure that this anti-competitive move by a Member State will be challenged not only before the Hungarian Constitutional Court, but in particular also before the EU institutions—the European Court of Justice and the Court of Human Rights.” She added that “Euromat is ready to provide full support to [MSZSZ] to do so.” The renovated Hippodrome casino, London The Las Vegas Casino in Budapest, Hungary