On December 7th, 2007, the Asian partner of James Packer, Lawrence Ho, says that their joint collaboration made some mistakes with their initial casino project, Crown Macau. He said that they were unable to fulfill their original vision for the casino. They also tried to squeeze a lot of slot machines to improve profits. Ho said that the important lesson that they have learned is that they should learn to adjust and they now know what to do next time.
Melco had responded to the adjustment by targeting the premium segment of the gambling market. Just last month, it entered into a three year gambling promotion agreement with Ama International.
Ama will exclusively promote VIP gambling at the Crown Macau casino. Melco's next venture is the $2.1 billion ($2.4 billion) City of Dreams casino facility. Melco is also planning to expand on Thailand and Japan in the near future. He said that collaborating with PBL will be beneficial to the future of the company.
Ho said that he had formed a partnership with Publishing and Broadcasting Limited because it is not a purely U.S. based company. Since PBL holds a huge Asian player database and branches all over the continent, it will have a good understanding of the market.
That thorough understanding of the Asian market has brought Lawrence Ho and James Packer in 2004, when they started the Melco PBL join collaboration. PBL was demerged this week, with its gambling division Crown Limited making their debut on the Australian Securities Exchange. Crown Casino holds a 41.4% stake in Melco PBL.
12/26/2007 07:22 PM
Ann Pettersson