Casino Sept 08 P22-26 8/21/08 12:52 pm Page 22
PETER BROOKS INTERVIEW
Peter Brooks
interviewed
Casino International recently met Peter Brooks, Executive Deputy
Chairman of Genting Stanley and asked him about the company’s
plans for the future, the renovations at Crockfords in London and
much more besides…
Peter Brooks
P
eter Brooks is, as Executive Deputy mish mash of different names, different fit outs,
Chairman of Genting Stanley, one of the different premises, and different markets in the
most influential people in the British provincial estate. We basically took three brands;
casino industry. It seems fitting that he Circus, Maxims and Mint. Circus is for the fun
works in the Genting Group, a forward- general player, general audience, Maxims is more for
thinking and aggressive casino operator that owns the professional, aspirational player, it’s a more
properties worldwide, with more in the pipeline, discreet, slightly more luxurious and Mints for the
including Sentosa, their Singapore development traditional gamer; that’s crudely how we’ve done it
which looks set to be something really special. and it was literally to get the whole thing under way.
When the Genting Group bought Stanley Leisure We had quite a debate about what brand we would
in 2006, it became part of an organisation with a net use to launch our online product, because you could
value upwards of $10billion US. The acquisition launch on all of our brands but then it becomes A)
meant that Genting owned more casino properties in very expensive and B) rather diffused, so we wanted
the UK than anyone else, with 44 operational at the to hit it with a single brand. We decided to go with
moment. The company also recently launched an Circus as the brand and we’ve launched
online gaming interest, www.circuscasino.com, its first circuscasino.com as our first online brand.
online casino brand. Peter talks to Casino We’ve got somewhere in the range of 4-500,000
International about all this and more… contactable accounts in the land-based estate and we
will look to access as many of those people as
Casino International: How long have you possible. We will treat the online business, which is
officially been with Genting Stanley? an offshore business, quite clearly separate, although
Peter Brooks: I started work for Genting in the for the player we will aim to provide a seamless
casino sector in the second half of 2004; when we service so that the distinction should be invisible to
acquired Maxims Casino Club. We took control of the customer. The online business will treat the land-
that in the beginning of 2005, and working as a based business as an affiliate, like any other online
director there was my introduction to the casino supplier and paying affiliates, so we will incentivise
business. I got myself certificated and began to learn the land-based estate to contribute to getting people
about the business. That carried on to late 2006 to play online. If you play back two years that would
when, having bought Stanley Leisure, what we agreed have been very hard to do because there would have
was the right thing to do was to fold oversight of been the natural reaction of cannibalisation; there’s
Maxims into the bigger estate. I was doing that two still an element of that inevitably but people have
days a week because I had various other jobs that I been surprised to discover how many of their land-
was doing, the largest of which is I’m Chairman of a based members are also playing online.
company called Enodis which manufactures food Between a quarter and a third of our players in
service equipment. clubs today are also playing online and we want them
to play with us and not somebody else, it’s a pretty
CI: How does Genting Stanley’s presence work simple story.
online? You, as a group, have very different We’ve rolled that out starting with
properties in Crockfords, Maxims, Stanley,with CircusCasino.com, and we have the ability with our
very different clients. Are you going online as a software supplier to add ‘skins’ so we can add
group brand, or with individual brands? Maxims, we can add Mint… We haven’t decided
PB: At the beginning of 2007, looking forward to whether we will or will not do that, because we may
the ability to advertise we decided we should want to focus all of the promotion effort on the
undertake a branding review because we had a whole one name.
22 SEPTEMBER 2008
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