Company of Young Professionals – Leadership Café with Great Canadian Gaming Corporation

Date: February 17, 2015

Name: Company of Young Professionals – Leadership Café with Great Canadian Gaming Corporation

Presenter: Chuck Keeling

The gaming industry in British Columbia supports many nonprofit organizations. Leaders in BC, especially in nonprofit sector, will know the gaming fund plays a great contribution through their operations. Gaming industry illustrates a major part of BC economic status. Company of Young Professionals invites Chuck Keeling, the Vice President of Stakeholder Relations and Responsible Gaming at Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, to discuss their industry issues and economic opportunities trends. Moreover, the presentation will expect young entrepreneurs to provide innovative ideas to address their concerns.

Great Canadian Gaming Corporation (GCGC) is founded in 1982. Currently GCGC is over 4000 employees in 4 jurisdictions. With over 16 properties, GCGC operates 10 casinos, hotels, resorts, theatres, and 4 race tracks. In addition, GCGC owns over 3 community gaming center in BC and it is public traded company.

Chuck Keeling illustrates the flowchart of the gaming industry.

Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch -> British Columbia Lotto Corporation -> Service providers -> Locations

The mandate of GPEB is to ensure BCLC is regulated by the Gaming control regulations. Therefore; all service providers are following the legal obligations.

Keeling indicates in this setting industry context, GCGC is a service provider. GCGC will ensure all locations are under the Gaming standard.

Keeling shares average of 706 million funding will be generated from GCGC per year. Two third of the funding will allocate to Provincial to support social programs for the community. The remaining one third will be retained by services partners, which includes wages, building costs and operation expenses.

GCGC also allocates funding to Municipalities. Within all the GCGC locations, Keeling states Richmond has the highest revenue report to Municipalities. In average, GCBC participates Community Gaming Grant Program that support over 5000 nonprofit communities with over 135 million funding annually.

Keeling believes GCGC has provided on both financial and on-financial supports. In addition, GCGC focuses on infrastructure development to help the communities. Keeling realizes the GCGC has provided opportunities by offering more than just gaming and hospitality. Furthermore, GCGC focuses on entertainment sector and provide employment opportunities which impact the labor market. The additional and direct economic investments from GCGC also create opportunities to grow in the economy.

Challenges from GCGC

Keeling believes GCGC is facing 5 major issues that could jeopardize the gaming industry.

• Problem gambling
• Money laundering
• Perception that casinos are associated with criminal activity
• Gaming as an economic drain to the economy
• Overall social stigma associated with gambling and casinos

Overall, Keeling is looking for innovative solutions from young entrepreneurs to solve these two questions.

• What do young entrepreneurs feel are the biggest barriers or issues for casinos in BC?
• In light of the barriers, what can casinos do to address these issues?

Responses from young entrepreneurs

Young entrepreneurs believes social stigma, which people believe casino has the bad influence on people, is a critical issue GCGC needs to address. They suggest GCGC to provide loyalty program to help gamblers to create self-awareness.

By providing a different set of membership package with exclusive deals, such as other attractions from BC, members are able to relate the message of supporting local communities. Young entrepreneurs recommend GCGC to work with other local nonprofit organizations to educate the social message. With a strong control on advertisement, GCGC can use visuals to impact the communities. Another suggestion is to allow GCGC to have a voting system for members to donate a bigger cause. With a strong media push, GCGC can create a different social message to the communities. When communities are aware of the social cause behind GCGC, they will participate and support the gaming industry.