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China will remain a key market for Asian gaming jurisdictions in the years to come, including those still emerging, an industry conference panel (pictured) heard on Tuesday, on the first day of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2023 Special Edition: Singapore.
“The Chinese market is so huge that you can’t afford to ignore it,” said Walt Power, chief executive of Ho Tram Project Co Ltd, the promoter of The Grand Ho Tram Strip casino resort in Vietnam.
The Chinese market “is not there yet” after nearly three years marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, “but it should be significant in the future,” stated Mr Power.
Hakan Dagtas, chief operating officer of the Newport World Resorts gaming and leisure complex in the Philippine capital Manila, said Chinese patrons would continue to be a “critical part” of existing gaming markets in Asia, and be vital for “emerging markets like Thailand and Japan in coming years”.
He added regarding China: “With a population of almost 1.5 billion people, if 10 percent of their population can have some discretionary spending [for gaming], I’m sure all the operators will look at that revenue stream.”
In 2019, the Philippines received about 6 million tourists, with circa 47 percent from China, according to the Newport World Resorts COO. “We haven’t reached those numbers yet,” he added, but getting back to those levels would be “extremely important”.
Even with the normalisation of travel across Asia, casino properties will have to adjust their offerings by creating additional non-gaming amenities and focusing on a “more lucrative” mass-market, the panellists respectively observed.
Gaming analyst Vitaly Umansky said almost every large-scale casino resort would need to “optimise” its property, to cater for a growing mass market, especially the so-called premium-mass segment.
“The question is how quickly will the [Chinese] customer be able to come back and if there are future impediments from a regulatory perspective within China that may limit those types of customer,” stated Mr Umansky. “But I think for every operator in Asia, it’s a critically-important customer base.”
Daniel Cheng, a gaming analyst and consultant, also mentioned the need to create more non-gaming amenities within casino properties. “I think it’s extremely important if these casino resorts are to be seen more as a recreational product,” he told the audience.
Even in that scenario, the Chinese customers would continue to be important. “They are very, very good spenders,” he stated.
“I think non-gaming plays a big part in mitigating the gambling element. That will then expand the customer base from a gambling base to more casual recreational players, which could be a very stable part of the mass-market segment,” added Mr Cheng.
The mass market had also gained prominence due to the retreat of casino-junket business in Asia, conference delegates were told.
“From a demand perspective, especially Chinese customer demand, working with junkets to facilitate business travel overseas; that I think is very difficult to do,” stated Mr Umansky.
There “will still be [a] place” for junket-type operations, “as long as the jurisdiction allows it,” but the “old-school model, with multiple [junket] rooms, operating in multiple jurisdictions; that’s going to be a lot more difficult to do,” he added.
The three-day G2E Asia event – marking this year the second edition in Singapore – is a conference and trade show on the regional casino industry. The gathering, staged at the Marina Bay Sands casino resort, is organised by Reed Exhibitions and the American Gaming Association.
Macau’s mass-market casino gambling segment – including slot machine play – generated revenue of MOP42.52 billion (US$5.31 billion) in the third quarter of 2024, accounting for a 76.5-percent share of the MOP55.60-billion aggregate gross gaming revenue (GGR) in the period.
Mass-market revenue for the three months to September 30 was down 1.4 percent sequentially, showed the data. The latest figure was nonetheless up 14.8 percent from a year earlier.
Third-quarter revenue specifically from mass-market baccarat stood at nearly MOP34.09 billion, down sequentially by 1.6 percent. It represented a market share of circa 61.3 percent of overall GGR in the latest reporting period.
Mass-market baccarat revenue rose by 14.5 percent from a year earlier, and was up 11.5 percent on the third-quarter 2019 result, a period during the last trading year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
VIP baccarat produced revenue of just above MOP13.08 billion between July and September, accounting for a 23.5-percent share of GGR in the period.
Third-quarter revenue in the VIP segment declined by 1.7 percent quarter-on-quarter, but was up 11.2 percent from the prior-year period.
Slot machine revenue stood at almost MOP3.12 billion, a market share of circa 5.6 percent. It was down 2.9 percent quarter-on-quarter, but rose by 9.3 percent from a year ago.
Casino promoter Wynn Resorts Ltd is to host an investor day in early October that the investment community hopes will shed light on the progress of the firm’s under-construction United Arab Emirates (UAE) scheme. That is according to a Wednesday note from banking group JP Morgan.
“The fact that management is willing to host a three-hour investor meeting could likely imply that regulations and licence issuance are imminent,” wrote analysts Joseph Greff, Samuel Nielsen, and Ryan Lambert.
They were referring to the Wynn Al Marjan Island project (construction pictured in a 2024 file photo) in which Wynn Resorts is an equity partner. The complex is being developed in Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE.
Wynn Resorts chairman and chief executive Craig Billings has previously emphasised the group wouldn’t have committed to the project without a strong belief that the UAE would deliver in terms of casino regulation and licensing.
JP Morgan stated in its Wednesday memo, referring to the impending investor day in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States: “We don’t look at this as a derisking event, but rather one in which equity investors can start to ascribe the [currently] discounted equity value related to the project.”
Wynn Resorts currently runs casino complexes in Las Vegas and Massachusetts in the U.S., as well as Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace in the Macau market via Wynn Macau Ltd.
Its fresh foray in a brand-new Middle East market, Wynn Al Marjan Island has been described as a US$3.9-billion venture involving local partners, in which Wynn Resorts is a 40-percent equity investor.
The casino company had made “meaningful progress on the debt financing for the project with significant interest from a diverse group of banks both locally in the region as well as internationally,” stated Julie Cameron-Doe, Wynn Resorts’ chief financial officer, speaking on the group’s second-quarter earnings call.
CBRE Capital Advisors Inc said recently the venture could generate US$1.4 billion annually in gross gaming revenue (GGR).
During Wynn Resorts’ second-quarter earnings call, Mr Billings said he was “delighted” with recent news that the official website for the UAE’s gambling regulator – the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) – had gone live to the public.
He added on the call: “I assume that they will be moving forward… to the next step in our licensure. I don’t have a specific timeline for you, but you can see all the momentum that’s happening there.”
Jim Murren, a former chairman and chief executive of casino group MGM Resorts International, is chairman of the UAE regulator.
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