ACN Spotlight: Casino Plus CEO Bares Plans for Future Hotel Expansion

October 29, 2024 Philippines ACN Spotlight iGaming & Gambling

Casino Plus CEO Evan Spytma disclosed that their company makes it a point to listen to the feedback of their players, which is why they launched a new version of their Color Plus game.

In an exclusive interview with ACN (Asia Casino News), the executive also disclosed their future plans for Hotel Stotsenberg, the home of Casino Plus, which is located at Clark Freeport Zone, formerly Clark Air Base, Philippines.

Evan was one of the speakers who took part in the 3rd Annual SPiCE Philippines which took place recently at Shangri-la Mactan in Cebu. During the panel discussion titled “Reinventing the land-based casino experience: Strategies physical casinos can implement to compete with online platforms,” Evan discussed the differences they noticed between online casino players vs land-based casino players.

Evan told ACN at the sidelines after their panel discussion: “Online casino players tend to be from the younger demographic. Those around 35 [year old players] to 45+ tend to want to go to land-based casinos but they are a bit slower when it comes to adoption of new technology

“The vast majority are more touristy, especially the 25-35 year old demographic.”

How do they plan to capture more of this demographic in the future?

“We continue to offer more new product offerings. We’ve launched Color Game, which is a huge success about two weeks ago.

“One of our players who had been with us for just about a year, she bet P50 pesos and she ended up winning P303 million.

“We’re also expanding our land-based casino. That will be going through a major expansion. Basically, we will demolish a vast majority of the property and we’re going to build two hotels with 700 rooms, a brand-new casino, about 20 F&B [food and beverage] areas. We’re doing that right now. Hopefully, we’ll have that completed within the next two years.

“It’ll be at the same footprint as our existing Hotel Stotsenberg.” He later added about their property: “It’s five minutes away from Clark. We’re the closest integrated resort to the Clark airport.”

How much will they be investing in these hotel expansions?

Evan smiled before saying, “It’s a substantial amount. Hundreds of millions but we believe in the future of the Philippines: both land-based and online so we think it’s a safe investment.”

Does he think that the Philippines is a safe place to invest in given the current political climate?

“I think politically it’s getting better, instead of moving towards a negative direction. I would say PAGCOR [Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation] has bene very supportive business partner for us. I think their vision for what they want to accomplish for the Philippines is very strong. We’re onboard with it and we’re very much in favor of the gaming market in the Philippines, especially now that land-based operators are allowed to go online.”

Was shifting to online a big move for them and how did they achieve this successful pivot?

“We launched Casino Plus two years ago and it’s been a huge success. We’re doing a hyper model where instead of offering purely digital games, we’re offering casino games that are on the premises and in the actual land-based casino but streamed online.

“You can play Color Game that way or slots, baccarat, or any of our table games. You could also walk into a land-based casino and see the actual operations in real time so you know everything is fair and transparent.”

What are their plans for the rest of 2024?

“We continue to double our revenue every six months. We want to maintain that. We’ve got a new version of Color Game.”

“Previously, the Color Game was giving out multipliers. We listened to our players and they said they wanted bigger jackpots. I think combined, that jackpot came closer to P800 million…if you combine all three jackpots or three tiers.

“Now that one of the major tiers was won, we listened to the feedback of players and the players said, ‘You don’t have to win for that long of a time period to get such a huge jackpot. How about making it more frequent but still large?’

“So we have a new version of Color Game coming up wherein we hope to have a winner of at least P10 million pesos every two days. That’s what we’re hoping to launch in 2024.”

Could he give statistics on the number of players who play Color Game?

“By far, we’re the market leader. We don’t give out specific numbers but definitely, tens of millions of players are online.

“We’re very much happy about the trust that players give us. The future is bright for online and land-based.”

What are their plans for 2025?

“We will continue to focus on land-based operations. We’ll make sure that construction is doing well and we hope to do a soft launch towards the end of the year. We will probably launch half of the property. That will be our main focus for 2025.”