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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Japan would benefit from “Osaka Strip”

Osaka’s Yumeshima Island would be a the perfect location for a Las Vegas style “Osaka Strip”, according to a new white paper from Global Market Advisors (GMA) titled White Paper: Japan Integrated Resorts.

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China’s High Rollers Are Phoning In Big Bets to Manila Casinos

by Daniela Wei and Bruce Einhorn

In a VIP room reserved for high-spending gamblers at City of Dreams Manila casino in the Philippine capital, many of the players are nowhere to be seen.  They’re not even in the country.

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This Year’s Model
by Marjorie Preston

When Japan’s long-delayed integrated resorts bill passed in December, the world’s leading gaming operators sent up skyrockets.  It’s no surprise.  A Japanese casino market could be massive, with one brokerage projecting revenues in the $40 billion range.

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