Earlier this week, Business Press Editor Ian Mylchreest and I met with a couple of entrepreneurs, visiting from Macao. Our conversation yielded a few tidbits, such as that retail business is booming at the American-run casinos over there ($1 million a week at Louis Vuitton, if I remember correctly, maybe more) but languishing at the restaurants.
Macanese gamblers, we were told, are so serious about their "sport," that they’ll wolf down a bowl of noodles, then rush back to the tables. No leisurely dining at the steak house for them. That’s one strike against the Vegas-model casino overseas.
Also, despite good retail revenues so far, Sheldon Adelson is having difficulty luring name-brand American stores to his Cotai Strip megaresort. Seems they want to see how the retail climate pans out before they commit.
Unlike American players, for the Chinese gambler, a casino visit is no mere "flutter." This is grim, life-or-death business — literally. We were told that an elderly woman collapsed and died of exhaustion on a Macao casino floor, having taken her passion (to put it mildly) to immoderate lengths. In this context, a column in Macau Business, in which AGA President Frank Fahrenkopf mildly suggests a need for problem-gambling programs seems slightly out of touch. Preaching sensible gambling in Macao seems a bit like marketing hybrid cars at the Daytona 500.
The Wrath of Hell: That’s what’s descended upon U.K. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell after the House of Lords drop-kicked her Casino Advisory Panel’s recommendation of Manchester for a "supercasino." Fallout from the vote has the Labour government darkly threatening retaliation against the peerage for having the temerity to think for themselves. Also, the supercasino may be temporarily scrapped, in order to preserve the 16 small casinos that were to be added. Hope springs anew for casino proposals in Blackpool and Greenwich, meanwhile.
Oh, and Chancellor of the Exchequer (and PM presumptive) Gordon Brown has dropped a whopping tax increase on existing casinos. Which has Harrah’s Entertainment wondering "What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?" Or some polite remonstrance to that effect.
By making "social regeneration" the leading criterion for the Casino Advisory Panel’s recommendation, Labour was probably dooming the CAP’s process to an unsatisfactory outcome. Even if the supercasino concession is re-awarded somehow to Greenwich, Deputy PM John Prescott’s chummy relationship with Millennium Dome owner Philip Anschutz is bound to raise accusations that The Fix Was In. So Tony Blair’s guvmint has to find some face-saving way of awarding the big casino to Blackpool, the least controversial choice of the bunch.
Anyway, for beyond-thorough coverage of the debacle, who more links than you can shake a stickman at, go to Gaming Floor.com, which has incredibly comprehensive print, audio and video documentation of the slow-motion collapse … another way in which the Blair regime, having come in like a lion, is going out as a mouse.
