When will the spring of Taiwan's gaming industry arrive? Recently, while international gaming giants have been investing billions of dollars in Macau, they have also set their sights on the rapidly developing gaming industry in Asia.
Although gambling is still officially prohibited in Taiwan, the fact is that since the issuance of Taiwan sports lottery tickets in May 2008, Taiwan's legal gaming industry has been open.
In recent years, not only sports, lottery balls, and lottery tickets have been launched, but some new types of "lottery ball" games have also been approved. International gaming companies are eyeing this huge consumer potential, hence the rush to penetrate the Asian market. Since the government does not directly open the lottery industry to foreign capital, some international gaming companies have racked their brains to form joint ventures with Taiwanese companies or relevant departments, either providing advanced gaming technology or acting as distributors.
UK online gambling company Ladbrokes and International Game Technology have invested in the Asian lottery industry, but the current returns are unclear. For example, Australia's Tabcorp gaming company lost $2.2 million in its China project in the second half of last year.
The company has partnered with Hong Kong's China LotSynergy to introduce Keno games to China.
Although there is no hope of profit yet, the largest gambling machine company in the US, International Game Technology, is still forming a strategic alliance with China LotSynergy. According to the agreement, International Game Technology will invest about $103 million in China LotSynergy to tap into the rapidly developing Asian lottery market.
Meanwhile, the UK's Ladbrokes company has also formed a joint venture with Hong Kong's AGTech, which operates sports lotteries, to introduce Ladbrokes' fixed odds betting products to the Asian sports lottery market. Another major US lottery company, Scientific Games, has been active in the Asian gaming industry for years and recently announced the launch of a new instant lottery game in China.
The aforementioned gaming giants are all hoping that Asian governments will further relax gambling bans. But the question now is, will the Taiwanese government eventually relax restrictions on welfare lotteries and sports lotteries and allow gambling to be legalized?
Some people believe that gambling is a fundamental human need, and it is impossible to completely ban gambling in Taiwan. Taiwan opened its gaming industry 15 years ago, and the question now is not whether to lift the ban, but how to further develop varieties. Gaming games are academically divided into lotteries, competitive games, and lottery ball games, all of which Taiwan now has, but "most of us are small probability games, and the return rate has not yet caught up with international standards," leading to a decrease in lottery players' interest;
At the same time, due to the overly simplistic domestic lottery gameplay, the real purchasing power subjects have not been attracted, turning instead to "underground" casinos or more "exciting" gambling methods abroad. There is no doubt that the issuance of lotteries provides significant support for various public welfare activities in Taiwan. However, data shows that the amount of money Taiwanese people gamble abroad each year is equivalent to ten times that of domestic public welfare lotteries and almost equal to the annual total income of the tourism industry.
This huge amount of money flows to foreign casinos through avid gamblers, as close as Macau, Myanmar, South Korea, the Philippines, and as far as Las Vegas. In addition, there is a huge underground gambling market in Taiwan. This situation has led to many social problems, and many people have been fined for lottery balls and illegal gambling. Therefore, how to crack down on illegal gambling and promote legal gaming has become an urgent issue for the government.
Promoting the opening of the gaming industry is beneficial for economic development, employment, and reducing capital outflow. To develop legal gaming projects with Taiwanese characteristics, use a guiding method to meet people's entertainment and leisure needs, while preventing irrational gambling behavior, such as setting up gambling addiction centers, fundamentally promoting the development of the gaming industry.
All countries' gaming industries are gradually moving towards openness, and Taiwan's gaming industry is no exception. At the same time, a gaming ring has already formed around Taiwan. In addition to Macau, countries including Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, and soon-to-open Japan (under construction) have established casinos.
Countries around the world are breaking the norm to extract considerable gaming revenue from Asians. For example, the number of individuals and groups who set up private gambling in Taiwan is rapidly increasing, and the amount of money involved and the number of participants are increasing by orders of magnitude each year. In China's only legal gaming area, the Macau Special Administrative Region, the scale and growth rate of its gaming development have already attracted worldwide attention.
In 2013, Macau's gaming gross revenue reached 360.7 billion Macau patacas, seven times that of Las Vegas. Calculated at a 3% kill rate, Macau casinos' annual fund turnover has exceeded 1.2 trillion Macau patacas. In February this year, Macau's gaming revenue reached 38 billion Macau patacas, up 40.3% from the same period last year, setting a new high; up 32.2% month-on-month.
Since the return of Macau, the Chinese government has advocated for Macau's economy to diversify moderately, not wanting Macau to still rely solely on the gaming industry. But looking at Macau Galaxy's reinvestment in Zhuhai Hengqin to build a large entertainment resort, Macau's gaming industry development has not made any adjustments, still operating at high or even excessive speeds. Essentially, the reason is not that Macau does not want to diversify, but that market demand dictates everything. The increasing number of gamblers and the influx of large gambling and money laundering funds have stimulated the continued high-speed expansion of Macau's gaming industry.
There is an old saying: "Fertile water does not flow into the fields of outsiders," which is probably something everyone can understand and comprehend. Although Macau is not an outsider, not only does none of the six main and deputy licenses in Macau's gaming industry have any connection with China, but they are also not entirely controlled by Macau locals, with some still owned by foreign capital. This means that a large part of the gambling funds flowing out of Macau will flow overseas. Therefore, the funds that truly flow into Macau locals are limited, and most of the gaming revenue flows overseas.
In recent years, China's economy has grown rapidly, the yuan has appreciated quickly, and there are more wealthy people who have started to travel abroad. However, some of this money is rapidly lost overseas in the form of gambling, and this loss rate is still increasing. For the mainland, the outflow of large amounts of gambling funds has not brought any revenue or help to the mainland's finances, but the social problems caused by this have further intensified and increased.
Any gambling participant, after losing money in gambling, will not react or express themselves in the foreign country where they participated in gambling. All the negative problems caused by gambling mostly erupt in the gambler's original place of residence. Cases such as corporate bankruptcy caused by gambling debts, employee layoffs, and family destruction have long been common. There are also gambling behaviors involving national civil servants, the loss of state-owned assets, national security, and other issues that are even more worrying.
In Taiwan, gambling is currently a gray area, and the problems generated by gambling, whether psychological, economic, or social, cannot be addressed. If you are caught for drug use, you will be sent for free treatment in a drug rehabilitation center, and drug addicts can even seek help from drug addiction hotlines and find corresponding rescue organizations for assistance. However, for problems caused by gambling, there are no other options except going to prison, being sentenced, or fined.
How can the outflow of gambling funds be prevented? If you can gamble legally in the country, who would risk being sentenced to gamble abroad? We are not advocating the legalization of gambling and the establishment of casinos, but we hope that the government can face the reality of gambling. As a government, it should face the current situation and establish specialized institutions to study and understand the development, regulation, and rescue systems of foreign gambling. At the same time, it should have a deeper understanding of Taiwan's own gambling history and the real current situation of the gambling industry in Taiwan's mainland.
Looking at the development history of the gaming industry in various countries around the world, it can be seen that almost all have experienced a similar process from traditional closed management to open management, especially in the face of "gambling"—the so-called "flood beast" in traditional concepts. In the process, almost all governments have taken a cautious yet cautious attitude.
Everyone knows the story of "Yu the Great Controls the Waters," and the core strategy of Yu's water control is "mainly dredging rivers and supplementally building dams and repairing dikes." This strategy can be applied to national gaming governance. We can traditionally block and encircle with "building dams and repairing dikes," and gradually transition to "opening channels for drainage" and mainly guiding open governance. It is difficult to fundamentally solve the problem with only the measures of "building dams and repairing dikes" alone. "Combining dredging and blocking" is the best principle of gaming governance. If gambling is moderately opened in specific areas, it will definitely bring considerable revenue to the national treasury. Taking from the people and using it for the people, thereby achieving the purpose of "turning water disasters into water benefits."
The gambling cities in the US are located in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, so the US's gambling wins and losses are all within the US, without worrying about losses to Canada. If Japan's gambling is established, Taiwan's funds are even more at risk. Moderately open the gaming industry. The "moderate opening" mentioned here is to learn from the systems and experiences of the international community, and make relatively strict restrictions on the location and form of casinos. While moderately opening the gaming industry, implement a high tax system for this industry, supplemented by a ban on specific groups (such as civil servants).
Many people will say that if the gaming industry is opened, it will harm social morality and cause social problems. In fact, this is an unnecessary worry. From the perspective of moral construction, although we can consider amending the law to allow the moderate existence of the gaming industry, it does not affect the moral negation mechanism for gambling issues.
For example, if celebrities or civil servants participate in gambling, they can still face moral condemnation and even disciplinary constraints; as for the emergence of social problems, do not imagine the gaming industry as a flood beast. Haven't you seen that Taiwanese people have lost hundreds of billions abroad, and society is still turning?
Gambling and stocks are essentially the same, which is to increase the liquidity of social funds and complete the secondary distribution of wealth. If Taiwan's stock market can exist, the existence of gambling should also have a certain possibility.
