Stephen Coates, Farah Master, Reuters · Monday, September 16, 2013 · 8:42 am
SYDNEY/HONG KONG — Asia’s new mega-casinos are driving sales and
innovation in advanced surveillance technology, from chips with built-in
radio transmitters to high-definition, multi-lens, digital cameras that
can scan huge gaming floors and catch the deftest sleight of hand.
Security solution providers such as German-Australian joint venture
Dallmeier International, California-based Pelco, a unit of Schneider
Electric PA, and Samsung Techwin Co Ltd, about 25 percent-owned by
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, are among those reaping the benefits of
Asia’s casino building boom.
Tens of thousands of security cameras, including some of the most
advanced commercially available, have been installed in the southern
Chinese territory of Macau alone in the past five years, and many
thousands more are on order for the multi-billion-dollar hotel-casino
resorts still in the pipeline.
“It’s big business. The camera market here has started to get very
big … It’s probably the most demanding environment for a video
surveillance system anywhere in the world,” said Craig Graham, Dallmeier
International general manager for Asia.
“Some of these guys (casino operators) have 700 tables and up to
1,000 slot machines, all of which have to be monitored 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.”
Graham said Dallmeier had about 20 percent of the video surveillance
market in Macau’s gaming industry, where its clients include Sands China
Ltd, a subsidiary of Las Vegas Sands Corp and one of six casino firms
licensed to operate in the only place in China where casinos are legal.
There are around 100,000 cameras installed in Macau’s casinos,
according to industry estimates, with room potentially for another
50,000 over the next five years. Companies declined to say how much the
industry was worth.
“It’s allowed firms such as ours who deal with cutting-edge
surveillance technology and video analytics to gain a good loyal
customer base in Macau,” Graham said.
Bob Ruggles, Pelco’s Asia-Pacific business development manager based
in Macau, said Asian demand had “allowed us to push our products to the
limit” of innovation.
In contrast, he said casinos in Las Vegas had been slow to adapt to
advances in digital technology, and some were still using VCR tape, in
part because of the costs associated with replacing old analogue
systems. “No one (in Macau) uses analogue anymore. Those days are gone,”
he said.
Something up their sleeves
Over the past decade, Macau’s casino boom has transformed the former
Portuguese colony – once known for its triad-riddled gambling dens –
into a global gaming centre boasting annual revenues of about $40
billion, six times those of Las Vegas.
China’s economic liberalisation and the growth in private wealth have
spawned casino mini-hubs in the Philippines and Singapore, all
supported by high-rolling Chinese players who think nothing of betting
hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single hand of baccarat.
The more money that flows through Asia’s casinos, the more determined
the cheats become – probing for signs of weakness and vulnerability,
and sometimes all it takes for them is some off-the-shelf gadgetry or
inside help.
Police arrested a casino pit manager and junket employee in Macau in
May after surveillance video allegedly caught them rigging a card shoe
at a baccarat table in a VIP room. In August, police arrested a croupier
and five suspected conmen from Taiwan after watching the dealer pay out
more chips than gamblers were entitled to during his shift. And this
month, police arrested two local female dealers after staff monitoring
CCTV caught them pocketing two gaming chips worth HK$100,000 ($12,900)
from a casino on Macau’s Peninsula.
Two years ago, in the Philippines, a gang was caught using
micro-cameras hidden up their sleeves to film the shuffle and relay the
footage to accomplices who in turn informed them how to play.
“Thieves have become more sophisticated,” said Joe Pisano, chief
executive of Jade Entertainment and Gaming Technologies, a Manila-based
provider of gaming technologies. Even so, he said new security measures
were making life tougher for the cheats.
“Now, with everything being electronic, there is probably a lot less
(fraud) than 20 years ago, when you could have used a metal bar and a
light to get coins to drop out of the slot machine,” Pisano said.
Macau benchmark
Facial recognition technology is at the vanguard of the newest
surveillance systems, allowing casinos to spot known troublemakers whose
names they share with each other and the authorities. But the software
needed to reliably identify people is in its infancy and some companies
are unwilling to take the risk of mistaking law-abiding customers for
cheats.
“It’s just not worth it,” said one Macau casino executive, adding
that visitor traffic at some of the bigger casinos could overwhelm the
software.
Casino operators are reluctant to risk new surveillance technology
until its reliability is proven, due to the costs involved in shutting
down VIP tables or alienating wealthy players. This can make it
difficult for new entrants to the industry, or those without a strong
track record.
That said, none of the casino operators want to fall behind either,
even though the latest security technology is very expensive, the
executive said. “Everybody keeps up to date with all the improvements so
we’re not lagging behind in any way. Obviously, with new properties you
go with the better product, the upgraded version,” he said, asking not
to be named so as not to reveal his establishment’s security
capabilities.
Another evolving trend is the matching of video with object tracking
and other data about players and staff to highlight situations that may
not be obvious on raw footage. Within a year or two, people in the
industry believe data analysis tools will be able to track the behaviour
and motions of dealers to spot any deviations from normal procedure,
and alert managers accordingly.
“Before, you used to have people walking around in the ceiling
looking through one-way glass. With the new mega-casinos here (in Macau)
the technology needs to be more intuitive,” said Dallmeier’s Graham.
Casino operators elsewhere in Asia look to Macau as the benchmark in security technology.
“Ours is really built around an international or Macau standard, at
the very least,” a casino executive in the Philippines told Reuters. “We
know there is a group of players that like to victimise newly opened
casinos.”
SOURCE: www.interaksyon.com
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