inside asian gaming www.asgam.com january 2015 30 MOP Destination MANILA City of Dreams, Solaire and the New Philippines IN FOCUS FEATURE TECH TALK Spiraling Higher: Is It Too Late JCM Tells Why Aristocrat’s new Helix To Save Caesars? Big Is Better COVER STORY CONTENTS JANUARY 2015 Vincent Kelly, managing director Asia Pacific, 14 Aristocrat Weaving a Destination The Philippines ramps up as a IN FOCUS regional gaming hub with the debut of 6 Unlocking the Box Melco Crown’s City of Dreams Manila. Players have never experienced their favorite Aristocrat games like they will on the new Helix™. FEATURES 12 Challenging Manifesto A billion dollars in resort casino plans are in the cross- hairs in Sri Lanka’s hotly disputed presidential election. 26 The BIG Bankruptcy Caesars has a novel plan for rescuing its largest and most indebted subsidiary from a sea of red ink more than $18 billion deep. But creditors are skeptical, lawsuits are flying, and time is running out. 33 Northern Exposure In the US, more casinos are coming to the crowded 20 Northeast—but there may be too many already. Sky Tower TECH TALK Lifts Solaire 38 Beyond Transactions The first casino in Manila’s The rationale for JCM’s acquisition of FutureLogic mirrors Entertainment City rises with an elegant the philosophy underpinning the extension, as it aims to shine globally. development of its latest products: laying the foundations for enhanced capabilities and creating greater value. BRIEFS 42 Regional Briefs 44 International Briefs 46 Events Calendar EDITORIAL Fear and Loathing NVESTORS who’ve bought heavily into the Macau boom story can’t be too happy right now with the extent of our collective ignorance about China and its complexities. About US$75 billion of share value has gone up in smoke in the space of a year, and it could get worse, as it appears that what President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi IJinping has unleashed with his anti-corruption campaign is of a dimension far beyond what its supporters from the outside thought they were cheering on. Operators and analysts blame Mr Xi’s crackdown for the dramatic decline in high-roller play that plunged Macau into negative revenue territory in 2014 for the first time in the post- monopoly era and sent the Hong Kong-listed shares of the six casino concessions into a freefall from which they’ve yet to recover. Speaking of this, Standard Chartered analyst Philip Tulk was moved recently to declare: “The VIP heyday is over.” Publisher If he’s right, then investors must be wondering how it went south so quickly. Macau gaming Kareem Jalal as a stock market play is not even a decade old. The heyday had hardly begun. And if he’s right, and he’s far from the only one who believes the market has hit a wall, then the bigger question Director is: How much don’t we know about China still? João Costeira Varela In official media on the mainland they talk about the “Shanxi Gang,” the “Yunnan Fiefdom,” the “Jiangxi Gang” and in Guangdong of the “Wan Qingliang Clique”—collective tarrings Editor James Rutherford reminiscent of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution—and these appear to be suggestive also of a massive leakage of power over the years into the clutches of party satraps at the provincial Editor At Large and municipal levels. Mr Xi looks determined to break the back of this latter-day warlord- Muhammad Cohen ism, and revitalizing the party as moral standard-bearer for the nation in the best (or worst) Maoist tradition appears to be integral to the campaign. Reports in Western media have it that Business Development Manager Danilo Madeira academics, journalists, artists and writers are under greater pressure to toe the line than they have been in years. Contributors In an interview with NBC News, James McGregor, former head of the American Chamber of Paul Doocey, John Grochowski, James Hodl, Commerce in China, said of Mr Xi, “He’s using the tools of Mao to become a Deng Xiaoping Matt Pollins, I. Nelson Rose 2.0. He’s taking on a gangster-type system, and to do that you’ve got to use the tools at your Graphic Designer disposal. He’s trying to change behavior. He sees this as a survival thing for the party.” Rui Gomes That’s one view. Long-time China-watcher Anne Stevenson-Yang, a director of J Capital Research, which advises foreign investors, sees the crackdown differently, describing it for Photography Barron’s as an “an old-style party purge reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s with quota-driven Ike, Gary Wong, James Leong, arrests, summary trials, mysterious disappearances and suicides”. Wong Kei Cheong As for the tools, the most feared among party members is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Bo Xilai was merely the first to lay his head beneath its ax. A train of others has followed, and it’s getting longer as it reaches higher into the political and economic life of Inside Asian Gaming the country. Just to be named on the CCDI’s Web site, as upwards of 700 cadres have been, trials is published by or convictions notwithstanding, is death to a career. Denunciations are reported to be rife. The Must Read Publications Ltd South China Morning Post says more than 75,000 party members have been investigated since 5A FIT Center Mr Xi assumed power in 2012. On average, 10,000 a month are being “disciplined,” according Avenida Comercial de Macau to state news agency Xinhua. Macau Tel: (853) 8294 6755 The fear factor is such that Caixin – China Economics & Finance, a magazine published by a prominent Beijing media group, says local administration in some areas is grinding to a halt. For subscription enquiries, please email “Nobody is sleeping well now,” said Bo Zhiyue, a veteran sinologist with the National [email protected] University of Singapore. Echoing Ms Stevenson-Yang, he told the Post, “There is a lot of uncertainty and there are no clear rules as to who gets investigated. … These are not solely cases For advertising enquiries, please email of corruption, they’re political judgment calls.” [email protected] or call: (853) 6680 9419 Investors wondering what the immediate future holds will want to be aware of how close their money has resided to one of the epicenters of the campaign. The aforementioned Wan www.asgam.com Qingliang, disgraced party secretary of Guangzhou, the capital of Macau’s neighboring province ISSN 2070-7681 of Guangdong, and Guangzhou Vice-Mayor Cao Jianliao are two of the biggest names to be taken down. Guangdong is China’s most populous province and its wealthiest by gross domestic Inside Asian Gaming product. It is Macau’s largest and most significant feeder market. Guangzhou is its economic is an official media partner of: heart, the hub of the mainland’s largest metropolitan area. At least 65 senior, middle- and lower- ranking officials have come under CCDI investigation in Guangdong, far more than anywhere else in the country. James Rutherford We crave your feedback. Please email your comments to [email protected] www.gamingstandards.com 4 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING JANUARY 2015 FINeature FOCUS Unlocking the Box Vincent Kelly, managing director‒Asia Pacific, Aristocrat Players have never experienced their Helix™ is all that. Casinos in Australia and the US are deploying it as we speak. Asia got its first look at this striking application of favorite Aristocrat games like they Aristocrat’s technological prowess at the Macao Gaming Show in November, and Mr Kelly expects it will be on Macau’s floors by will on the new Helix™ Christmas and then fan out regionally from there. “We’ve had some very nice feedback from customers around the world,” he says. “Early days, but all the signs are very positive that it’s doing what we hoped that it would do.” HE·LIX What Helix™ does is reimagine the interaction between player /’hē-liks/ and game in ways that have to be seen to be fully appreciated. New • a type of smooth space curve, i.e. a curve in three- processors in a souped-up hardware package power a dual 16:9 LED dimensional space; back-lit interface. Both screens are a spacious 23 inches across (or • the shape formed by a line that curves around and along a better yet, sample the 32-inch optional Super Screen) and fully HD at central line; a dazzling 1,080 pixels. • of or relating to the advancement to higher levels through a But here’s the “twist”—the displays are frameless, infinity-edged, series of cyclical movements. so the action appears to float away from the cabinet surface in planes and proportions that are seamless, continuous, almost three- dimensional. 5 Dragons’ lucky monster head talisman seems to leap HE company that created the most popular games on into independent space in vivid, lifelike contours. Fortune King Choy Macau’s bustling slot floors has designed an exciting Sun Doa showers his coins into an illusion of thin air. new environment for its players to enjoy them in. Combined with quad sound boosted by a ported, enclosed It’s called Helix™—“a cabinet with a few amazing subwoofer and rear-surface ambient lighting, the total effect is twists,” as Aristocrat cheekily refers to its innovative new marvelous, completely enveloping from where the player sits. The platform—and certainly the description is apt. lighting also can be controlled to draw attention when the game is T “Very simply it looks better and it does more,” says Vincent Kelly, idle—not that attracting players will be difficult given the market- who arrived in Macau in October as the company’s new managing leading content that finds Aristocrat, a decade on, still firmly in director–Asia Pacific.