Frontier Capital Group’s new Philippine casino will rely on proxy betting to lure its share of Asian high rollers.
This month will see the Australia-listed Frontier Capital Group complete its $26m acquisition of the Hotel Stotsenberg and Casablanca Casino in the Clark Freeport Zone in the Philippines. The company expects that the acquisition, which was announced in November, will double the company’s profit by 2018.
Frontier Capital had already announced its intention to boost its new casino’s gaming options by raising the number of slot machines from 190 to 250 and adding 11 gaming tables to the existing 36.
On Tuesday, Australian financial consultancy Alpha Securities revealed that Frontier Capital’s expansion strategy includes “targeting VIP patronage,” in part through the ‘introduction of proxy betting,” in which a VIP phones into the casino to place bets via a trusted partner, who relays real-time card information to the gambler at home.
Proxy betting is all the rage in Manila’s integrated resorts, reportedly accounting for up to half of all VIP activity. But in the Clark Special Economic Zone, only the Jimei Group’s Fontana Leisure Parks and Casino is offering proxy betting as a gaming option.
Proxy betting is increasingly popular among Chinese VIPs, who don’t have to leave the comfort of their homes to scratch their gambling itch, a definite perk when Beijing is monitoring its citizens’ outbound travel like Peyton Manning monitors Al Jazeera’s twitter feed.
HILTON GROUP COMING TO CLARK FREEPORT ZONE
Meanwhile, the Clark Freeport Zone is expecting the arrival of the Hilton group in Q4 2017. Hilton announced last week that it had signed a deal with Sunvalley Hotel Clark Corp to open the Hilton Clark at the SunValley Country Club. The 268-room hotel will be part of “a mixed-use development that also includes a casino.”
No details on the casino were specified in the release but it expects to open around the same time as the hotel. The $400m SunValley Country Club, construction on which began in 2012, is the baby of South Korean construction firm Donggwang Construction Co Ltd, which operates similar resorts in South Korea and Japan.
