Inside Asian Gaming

November 2014 inside asian gaming 43 contribute to public, social or charitable causes and have a track record of compliance with Singapore law and regulation. They will not be allowed to offer casino-style games or poker, however. Singapore Pools, a state-owned lottery and gambling operator, also will be exempted. Singapore Pools is owned by Singapore Totalisator Board, a statutory agency under the Ministry of Finance. It currently markets three lottery games and is the city-state’s sole legal bookmaker for football and motor sports betting. expansive mixed-use leisure complex, and on Japan’s Okinawa island, where the company owns 100 acres of land. Reports are he may pursue a public listing in Singapore to fund the projects separately from the parent company’s resources. The Jeju resort, Gotjawal Village, is a joint venture between Berjaya Land and Jeju Free International City Development Centre, a quasi-commercial subsidiary of South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. The project is not yet licensed for a casino, and the island’s new governor, Won Hee-ryong, is wary of allowing any more—the island, a top destination for tourists from China, is home to eight casinos already, and Genting Singapore is partnering with Chinese interests on plans for a ninth. As it stands, though, Gotjawal is the island’s largest mixed-use development to date, priced at US$2.4 billion at full build-out, with plans that include luxury beachfront hotels and private residences, a medical center, a retail mall and entertainment and sports venues. Mr Tan has wanted for years to develop a casino complex on a similar scale in Malaysia to compete with Kuala Lumpur-based Genting Group’s Resorts World Genting just north of the capital city. Plans unveiled last year centered on the company’s 18-acre Berjaya Hills resort in Johor on the border with Singapore. Berjaya Hills is licensed to operate machine games, but Mr Tan envisioned a $930 million casino and hotel targeting middle- and upper- income gamblers from the region currently patronizing Resorts World and Singapore’s two IRs. The plan collapsed in the face of local government opposition. Berjaya’s far-flung holdings, which include Malaysia’s TOTO sports lottery, range from shopping malls, property development and hotel management to landfills and environmental services. Mr Tan also holds a majority stake in Welsh football club Cardiff City and plans to invest in a US Major League Soccer club in Los Angeles. Malaysian Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail, in the meantime, has announced that his office is drafting revisions to laws governing online gambling as part of a new push to rein in a thriving underground industry estimated to be generating more than US$1 billion in annual profits from thousands of e-casinos and betting operations nationwide. Police routinely raid such venues and seize equipment and cash, but Mr Gani Patail has said they’ve been largely ineffective in the absence of a more comprehensive framework of laws and regulations specifically targeting cyber-betting. REGIONAL BRIEFS The Bluffs, a Greg Norman-designed golf course, debuted at The Grand Ho Tram last month. Ho Tram’s New Plan: Luxury Residences Vietnam’s premier resort casino is looking to overcome its struggles in a foreigners-only market by expanding its offering with luxury vacation homes. Last month’s debut of a Greg Norman-designed golf course at The Grand Ho Tram was accompanied by an announcement from American hedge fund tycoon Phil Falcone, the US$500 million resort’s majority owner, that high-end villas and condominiums will be developed as part of a planned second hotel tower. Mr Falcone’s Harbinger Capital recently plowed an additional $50million into The Grand, which opened last July on two kilometers of scenic beachfront on the South China Sea with a blueprint for adding more hotel rooms to its existing five-star complement of 541, which are reported to enjoy solid weekend bookings, and also more non-gaming attractions. The property’s 90 table games and600-plusmachine games haven’t fared as well, mainly because they’re off limits to Vietnamese citizens by law—the country’s six casinos are open only to foreign passport holders—and the roads from metropolitan Ho Chi Minh City, about 90 kilometers distant, are less than ideal, though they are improving. In this light, opening a residential market to domestic and international investors could prove a valuable income stream. As Mr Falcone put it, “This is a chance for everyone to own a piece of the Ho Tram Strip.” Stephen Shoemaker, the new chairman and CEO of The Grand’s owner, Asian Coast Development (Canada), said details on the expansion would be announced soon. Berjaya Eyes Listing for Jeju, Japan Casino Plans Thwarted in his desire to open a resort casino in his home country of Malaysia, whose government is looking to crack down on widespread illegal gambling, tycoon Vincent Tan is spreading his wings into South Korea and Japan. The founder and head of the Berjaya conglomerate is seeking partners for casinos he wants to develop on South Korea’s popular tourist island of Jeju, where Berjaya broke ground last year on an Berjaya Chairman Vincent Tan