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The lawyer who turned to gaming

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Times are exciting for Mark Michalko and the global gaming supplier International Game Technology (IGT). The Nevada-based company is focusing on adjusting its products to Asia’s needs, since its US$6.4 billion merger with Italy-based lottery equipment specialist GTech SpA, one year ago. With different prospects for development, the director of sales for Asia believes in the growth of the company in the region in general, and in Macau in particular.

IGT is one of the biggest gaming technology providers in the world, having been around for more than 50 years. Michalko joined IGT’s team five years ago and moved to Macau to become the company’s director of sales for Asia. But he has been around gaming far longer than that and initially joined the industry by chance.

“I never intended to be in the business at all, I was a lawyer,” he says. Lawyer by education and training, he “got into gaming totally by accident” and has stayed for almost 40 years. “I was in the lottery side of the business for many years,” he adds.

After being an Ohio Lottery legal counsel, he later became the founding director of the California State Lottery, which was the first lottery to operate in that state, back in 1984. Since then, he was always been involved in the operator side of business.

In 2006, he moved to Hong Kong to serve as president and director of the Hong Kong-based Asian subsidiary of lottery company Intralot. And five years ago, he was recruited for his current position, in Macau.

Having lived in California for more than 20 years, he believes Macau is refreshing because of its small size.

“I actually love it; it’s kind of a small place,” he says. “Business is challenging, but you can escape,” Mark adds. “There are places you can relax, go for a run or a hike in the hills, get down to the beach.”

Hong Kong is similar to Manhattan, “exciting, busy 24/7, never run out of places to go, but there’s almost no escape”. In Macau, “there’s a good blend of great things – great restaurants, great hotels, that sort of thing.”

Michalko is based in the territory as it is an “epicentre of gaming”, but his job is to take care of business all across Asia.  The company has been focusing on growing on this side of the world.

“We have struggled a little bit, to be candid, here, in Macau itself. We expect, with some of the new games we’ll be offering over the next year or two, to actually grow our footprint, but we’ve done very well in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Korea and in Vietnam.”

Overall, he expects growth of the industry to continue for everyone in general and for IGT in particular. “We think we’re coming out with new products that will be very good for our growth potential, not just in Macau, but across Asia.”

He believes, once the new openings in Cotai are finished, the market will become “more of a replacement market for machines”, with new games replacing old ones. “We’re already at that stage in Singapore.  They have two casinos, that’s all they will have, they’re limited in the number of machines they can have, no growth, so the only business potential there is to replace either our old products or hopefully our competitors’ products.”

Looking to other places in the region, like Korea and The Philippines, he sees some “growth potential across Asia for the next several years”.

Within that context, he believes IGT has a very good opportunity to grow. “We are coming up with very good new games, brand new machines, slot machines, a lot of features that make it very comfortable for players to play. The graphics are good, the design is very ergonomic, the games are the type that will appeal to the Asian players,” he says.

As for the future of IGT in Macau, Mark highlights that the company “does very well with systems” and he is “optimistic” about being able to continue getting their share of new openings.  From a machine standpoint, prospects are also good, even though competition is hard in the territory.

“Even if we have total growth being limited or stagnant, within the existing number of machines, we think we can increase our floor share, by replacing other operators’ machines. I’m optimistic.”

 

IN BRIEF

Wynn Palace revamped

Wynn Palace is to be revamped soon so as to attract more mass-market players, according to a report from Dan Wasiolek, a senior equity analyst, posted on Morningstar’s corporate website. “We now believe that the [Wynn] Palace’s slow ramp-up is also due to the design of its large and open casino space, which is leading to the perception of thin crowds and thereby reducing the feel of compressed energy that many gamers seek.”

Virtual Games are in place

Hong Kong-listed casino equipment supplier Paradise Entertainment Ltd wants to launch, through its electronic table game (ETG) unit LT Game Ltd, virtual sports products in the city’s casinos in “the second quarter or third quarter of 2017,” according to GGRAsia. LT Game has signed an exclusive deal with Inspired Gaming (UK) Ltd – a unit of the United Kingdom’s Inspired Gaming Group Ltd – to provide virtual sports content on ETG terminals in the Macau market.

Casio Taipa re-launched

Casino Taipa has re-launched operations in the Regency Art Hotel, with five tables and some 112 electronic gaming seats, according to brokerage Union Gaming. The casino opened in 1987 but ceased operations in 2008 and was under the casino license of local gaming operator SJM.

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