Casino games maker Paradise Entertainment Ltd is looking to Southeast Asian markets for placement of its LT Game-branded slot machine products, said the firm’s co-chairman and managing director Jay Chun, in an interview with GGRAsia.
The Philippines was currently the “number one” market in Asia for slot suppliers, albeit “highly competitive”, suggested Mr Chun, though he noted it “now has over 23,000 slot machines”. A particular target for the group is the large-scale private-sector gaming resorts in Entertainment City in the Philippine capital Manila.
The LT Game Ltd unit is well-known for its live multi game electronic table game technology that is teamed with a live dealer to provide the atmosphere of a traditional table game, though at generally lower minimum bets. But the brand also offers slot games and cabinets – the dual-window LTS1, the curved-monitor J-curve, and the RGX1000, the latter developed by a Japan-based unit. The slot product offer is aimed at Macau and North America, as well as Southeast Asia.
The group is also exploring the Vietnam market. There, casino business performance “is not as strong as in the Philippines,” Mr Chun stated, but nonetheless “one of our target markets”.
Malaysia is also of interest. Resorts World Genting, the country’s only casino complex, nonetheless hosts a lot of slot inventory, said Emily Io, senior vice president of sales at LT Game, in remarks to GGRAsia.
LT Game had started to deploy its own slot products in markets including North America before the Covid-19 pandemic. That process had been disrupted by the global health alert, resulting in layoffs of LT Game staff in North America, Mr Chun mentioned.
“But now as the market recovers, we can pick… up” the sales and deployment effort, he added.
In the Macau market, one recurring concern for the gaming machine suppliers is the local government’s setting of a 12,000 cap on the number of such products that can be utilised at any one time by the city’s six gaming concessionaires, Mr Chun told GGRAsia.
“Let’s hope they [the government] will review the subject, and allow more machines in the market,” he stated.
He suggested the policy was at odds with the government’s desire to diversify Macau’s gaming offerings, and boost the market’s appeal to foreign patrons. “…foreign patrons like slot products. That means, we should be allowed to allocate more,” Mr Chun remarked.
The market “should be allowed to install more game types that foreign patrons like, even they are less profitable than the traditional baccarat games,” he added.
