INTERVIEW MITCH GARBER
“PEOPLE BEING ABLE TO SEE CAESARS ON FACEBOOK, IOS AND ANDROID IS GOOD FOR THE OVERALL CAESARS ENTERTAINMENT BRAND. THIS IS THE COMPANY THAT HAS CELINE DION AND SHANIA TWAIN PERFORMING AT THE PALACE”
Garber on Caesars' global expansion
His formative working years were spent at his godfather’s law ?rm, which represented a number of land-based gaming ?rms. A young lawyer with “lots of passion and energy”, the stars aligned for him as his interest in gaming and technology grew alongside the prominence of the internet, and he seized the opportunity to lead the ?rm’s gaming practice into the new era. “[While at the law ?rm] I became very interested in the business of casino resorts, casino gaming, slot manufacturing (Garber represented IGT in those early years) so I was engaged from a very early stage and have now been in the business for 22 years or so. However, I think I always knew I was going to be a businessman but the right business had to come around where I could be successful and could make a real impact.” At PartyGaming – which he joined after stints at Terra Payments and then Optimal Payments – Garber had been in the job less than six months when the US government effectively scratched off 80% of the operator’s revenues by banning online gambling in September 2006. Yet he was credited with turning its fortunes around, through diversi?cation into new markets and away from Party’s core poker product, to make it the biggest gaming company in the world. By the time he revealed he would not be extending his contract in 2009, the company reported a more than 100% increase in annual pro?ts from $50.9m to $111.7m and a 41% improvement in revenues.
GLOBAL EXPANSION
The Caesars brand is being expanded around the world in many ways; hotels are currently being built in countries where casino gambling is not even permitted and today the business attracts more non-gaming revenues than it does through gambling. The proliferation of the gaming brand onto social platforms, alongside WSOP-branded online poker in a handful of European regulated markets, has allowed Garber to take steps towards his ultimate goal of making CIE “a multi-billion dollar asset of Caesars Entertainment”. “People being able to see Caesars on Facebook, iOS and Android is good for the overall Caesars Entertainment brand. This is the company that has Celine Dion and Shania Twain [performing at the Palace], that has Forum Shops [in Vegas], that
has an app on F acebook. We really do view it as an entertainment business.” But let’s not pretend that social gaming and Canadian country singers were the reasons why Garber was hired. His experience of running PartyGaming – merged with Austrian operator bwin in 2011 – for two years means there are expectations he will have similar, and if not more, success with Caesars’ real-money online gaming brand. The pressure is on, however, with CIE’s parent company reportedly laden with $20bn in longterm debt, the highest in the casino industry. If reports in the US media are true then this could lead to the interactive business being spun off as a separate public company, a move recommended by US ratings agency Fitch which claimed it should “extract value out of interactive and not risk the entity being pulled into the restructuring proceedings”. While it’s an issue Garber can’t discuss openly, he says “ultimately it would be good for shareholders and also good for CIE”. The operator has been preparing for USfacing online poker for almost four years and is “ready to switch on the site” as soon as Nevada’s regulator gives it the green light. Two US- facing poker partnerships have been formed – with 888 in January 2012 and French operator Groupe Lucien Barrière just days later – causing some confusion within the industry over which will be the favoured platform in the long term. The answer is quite simple. 888 is considered by Garber to be one of the “best platforms anywhere in the world today”, and will be deployed in Nevada once licensed to do so in the next few months, and most likely New Jersey. The agreement with Barrière meanwhile, with which CIE launched Barriere.fr in February 2011, sees the operator in a development partnership to create US-ready proprietary platform, which will “take some time”. “[888] understands that for us as a large public company, ultimately having ownership of our own software is an important asset for us to have,” explains Garber. “Though we have no plan of when or where we would use our own platform yet, the people at 888 are very understanding of the fact that this will be a very important insurance tool for us.” Under the terms of a deal signed in September 2009, 888’s B2B arm Dragon?sh supplied Caesars with poker and casino software, payment and customer support services for the launch of its Caesars and World Series of Poker (WSOP)branded offerings in the UK. A deal with Italian poker network Microgame also sees WSOPbranded tournaments and quali?ers in the Southern European country. Will the US-facing poker offering also be under the WSOP brand? “Yes, at a bare minimum that is absolutely the plan,” explains Garber. “WSOP is certainly our strongest poker brand. But we
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