13 Holdings Misses Luxury Macau Hotel Deadline
By Daniela Wei amd Annie Lee
13 Holdings Ltd. missed a Monday deadline to open its luxury hotel in Macau, a condition of a HK$3 billion ($384 million) loan from Band of Communications Co. for the gaming project just off the Cotai strip, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Vietnam: A step in the right direction?
by Caroline Watson
A year ago, the Asian gaming landscape appeared bleak. Macau was enjoying another year of steady decline, even after Melco Crown Galaxy Entertainment devoted $5bn in new resorts, whilst South Korea had more licenses available than qualified bidders. There were so few attractive opportunities in the region that Asian companies were looking at Europe as an alternative.
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Educating Japan
by Andrew W. Scott
Inside Asian Gaming spoke with Managing Partner at Global Market Advisors, Steve Gallaway, to gain a deeper insight into the company’s 2017 White Paper on Japan Integrated Resorts
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Phil Falcone Bets on a Casino (Where the Locals Can’t Gamble)
by Matthew Campbell
It’s 7:55 on a sweltering Tuesday morning in southern Vietnam, and more than 1,000 cleaner, cooks, and card dealers from the Grand Ho Tram Strip casino wait outside the resort’s largest ballroom for a staff meeting to start. A bass-heavy electronic beat booms from within. When the doors finally open, drawing a cheer, the ballroom is dark, apart from beams from blue and white spotlights dancing across the ceiling. In the middle of the floor are five figures. Four are tall Vietnamese women, dressed in bright red, ankle-length feathered skirts; bright red, rhinestone-studded bikini tops; and bright red, feathered headdresses twice the width of their shoulders. The women form a square and stride forward, hoplite warriors in the world’s weirdest phalanx, with the fifth person at their center: Michael Kelly, a middle-aged guy from Philadelphia who’d never even visited Asia before signing on as the casino’s executive chairman.
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Journey to Japan
by Muhammad Cohen
Have you heard the one about the Japanese high roller? Not lately, according to a range of sources in the gaming industry. Even though Japan remains the world’s third largest economy and whales like Akio Kashiwagi made casino owners such as Donald Trump sweat as they rolled millions during the 1980s and early 90s, Japanese premium players are little more than a footnote in Asia these days.
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Betting on Brazil
by Chris Sieroty
The popularity of Jogo do Bicho – the animal gambling game – is proof, some analysts and gaming executives say, of how successful Brazil’s gambling industry could be.
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Casino expert stresses convergence of gaming and nongaming industry
Amid Macau’s gaming revenue comeback this year following three consecutive years of financial blunders, the annual three-day Global Gaming Expo Asia concluded Thursday with experts eager for the future of Macau beyond a gambling destination.
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U.S. operators big contributors to Macau growth: AGA head
The U.S. casino operators with a footprint in Macau have made “immense contributions” to the development of the city’s casino industry, and that should be recognized during the upcoming concession renewal process, says Geoff Freeman, president and chief executive of the American Gaming Association (AGA).
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G2E Asia: IR Brainchild was for both profitability and ‘political cover’ says panelist
by Daniel Beitler
The creation of the integrated resort (IR) concept, which debuted in Las Vegas and later spread to Macau, was intended to both diversify operator offerings as a means of increasing profitability as well as provide “political cover” for what are essentially casino-hotels, said a panelist during a session yesterday at the Global Gaming Expo Asia (G2E Asia).
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Proxy betting: A Friend indeed
by Shaun McCamley
Proxy betting is booming in Asia’s grey markets, with live streaming of table games thought to be pulling in a chunk of Macau’s missing VIP billions. In early 2016, industry analysts estimated that proxy betting’s contribution to overall Macau VIP betting volume had grown about 15 percent in 2015 from the prior year. Proxy gambling, in its simplest form, allows a person to wager on a table game from a remote location, using a proxy to place his/her bets at a live table game in a casino, and communicating via telephone.
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