In the fourth of InterGaming's series of interviews with key gaming executives ahead of this month's G2E Asia show, we talk to Kurt Gissane, managing director of Asia Pacific at Bally Technologies.
How important is the Asian market to Bally Technologies currently and how big a part of its future strategy does it represent?
The Asia Pacific region is extremely important to Bally as it is now home to the two largest gaming markets in the world: Macau and Singapore. Also, we are playing close attention to the recent developments in the Philippines over the next 12-36 months, and we see the possibility that the Philippines could easily become the second largest gaming market after Macau.
Although still not huge on a slot install base perspective compared to the likes of North America and Australia, Asia is a huge emerging market with large-scale Integrated Resorts constantly developing, providing significant opportunities on both the games and systems side of our business.
Which of your company's products are proving successful in the region and how are they tailored to the market?
On the systems side, our slot accounting and player-tracking systems such as SDS, CMP, and ACSC. Also, our innovative table management solution TableView has proven successful in the region. We have done significant work on our systems in order to localise our products to suit the Asian market, namely Junket and Premium Player modules as Macau runs Junkets/VIP much differently to other parts of the world. This module along with Cage module were both specifically developed with Macau/Asia in mind.
On the games perspective, we are focusing on developing in-house Mystery Progressive Links which display specialised market-oriented content. We have released the Golden Empire and Jeepney Joyride Mystery Links for the Macau and Philippines gaming markets respectively. Furthermore, our Premium games such as our Cash Spin, Vegas Hits, Hot Shot Cash Wheel, and Cash Wizard have all been fully translated into Chinese and they have been a huge success.
Which jurisdictions are particularly buoyant at the moment and which do you anticipate being future hotspots?
As I mentioned earlier, Macau and Singapore are the two largest markets in the world, and where we continue to further growth potential. Philippines is another emerging market that we are very excited about along with Vietnam where interesting development opportunities will unfold in the near future with properties due to open in 2013.
Why is it important for your company to exhibit at G2E Macau?
The show really gives us the opportunity to showcase our latest innovations to our customers and also have the chance to meet with them in a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. It is always great to spend time with our customers, we know their time is valuable so we try to take advantage of every bit of face time we get. We have an excellent opportunity to get first-hand impressions on our latest innovations from our customers. We are confident that we have a great selection of games and systems products to enhance their operations.
What can we expect from your company at the show?
We will showcase our world-class licensed brands Michael Jackson King of Pop, Grease, and Betty Boop’s Fortune Teller. We will also display our locally developed Mystery Progressive Links and a wide array of region-specific standalone Chinese game titles such as Moon Dynasty, Sakura Festival, Beijing Treasures, and more on our Pro Series cabinets. On the systems side, we will exhibit our world record-setting technology iVIEW Display Manager (DM) and the Elite Bonusing Suite (EBS) applications. And with the launch of our Bally Interactive division, we plan to have live demonstrations of the company’s cloud-based custom mobile apps and mobile websites for casino patrons and internal-facing apps for casino employees
Finally, Asia's gaming markets are predicted to see enormous growth over the next few year - what factors will this depend on?
One of the factors would definitely be the continuous product localisation from manufactures, adapting their products to the local market demands. Also, we have to be in the lookout for any regulatory changes and barriers to entry in some of the emerging markets. And another interesting factor that we see is the 'allowance of locals vs foreigners only'. For example, Vietnam is currently a foreigners-only market, but if they allow locals to gamble in these large-scale integrated resorts it could be huge.
