Happy new year. After largely successful forecasts for 2016, let’s highlight what won’t happen in Asia’s casino business this year. Macau won’t return to the breakneck growth of early this decade or provide any further clarity what happens when casino licenses expire (tenures begin to end in 2020). A failed casino executive in the White House won’t spark an industry boom in Asia. Japan won’t pick the locations or operators for the integrated resorts it approved in concept in December. China won’t relent on President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, which has morphed into a crackdown on illegal money transfers that continues to reshape Asia’s casino business. With that in mind, let’s look at what is likely to happen in 2017.

Long way back for Macau

Praveen Choudhary, Asia equity analyst at Morgan Stanley, makes a convincing argument for 10% gaming revenue growth in Macau this year. Reasoning in his report, written with colleagues Alex Poon and Thomas Allen, includes more guest rooms at casinos – thanks to the opening of MGM Cotai and Melco Crown’s City of Dreams’ fifth hotel tower – and continuing cyclical upturns in key mainland China economic factors. The report’s real takeaway is about Ebitda. Morgan Stanley estimates gaming licensees’ property Ebitda grew 5% in 2016 and will grow 13% this year then 8% next year. That compares with average growth of 36% annually for the seven years to 2014. Industry-wide Ebitda in 2015 was 35% below the peak of 2014, and the 2018 projection remains 18% below 2014. Macau fell into a very deep hole, and it will be a long climb just to reach where it was.

China continues to crack down on money transfer beyond the mainland. Expect more signals, such as the arrests of Crown employees in the mainland on gambling promotion charges and last month’s nuisance cut in UnionPay ATM transaction limits, but not daily withdrawal limits, so travelers can get the same amount of money with twice the inconvenience. Macau’s gaming revenue growth will struggle to exceed mainland China’s GDP growth rate. In the long run, though, China would rather that its citizen gamble in Macau than anywhere else in world, ensuring Macau’s future within the constraints the mainland leadership sets. Call it the iron baccarat shoe.

Caesars conquers the Philippines?

The Philippines will continue to be Asia’s most eventful gaming market. Ousted Wynn Resorts Vice Chairman Kazuo Okada is expected to formally christen his $2 billion integrated resort, the country’s most expensive ever, during this first quarter. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who moved against online gaming and Macau junket promoter Jack Lam, will almost certainly have more to say about the industry.

Duterte has already ordered government owned Pagcor to sell its casinos. Outside observers have long questioned how Pagcor can responsibly regulate the casino industry while operating Casino Filipino, competing with private casinos. Several local casino and other gaming operators are logical candidates to buy Casino Filipino; so is Caesars Entertainment, which proposed building an integrated resort at Manila’s airport. Caesars is in the midst of a bankruptcy reorganization, but insists it can still do deals. Pagcor’s previous leadership felt Caesars would enhance the national reputation, but Duterte may not want more American presence.

More relevant short term will be how closer ties with China affect the casino sector. China may decide to care less about capital flows to a friendly regime. Or getting tougher on funds from China could be the price of friendship and development funding.

South Korea bloom and bust

The April opening of Incheon’s Paradise City changes the game for South Korea. At full build-out early next year, the $1 billion integrated resort from South Korea’s leading foreigner-only casino operator Paradise Group and Japanese gaming machine specialist Sega Sammy, that’s adjacent to the nation’s gateway airport, will leverage its “Koreaness” to attract visitors. Paradise City attractions include a Korean Wave theme park, celebrating the pop culture that’s captivating Asia , along with hotel, convention, retail and casino space. As with all but one of South Korea’s 17 casinos, the gaming is for foreigners only.

Without a local market and without seemingly endless floods of high rollers from China – both widely assumed when the resort was conceived in 2011 – Paradise City may struggle for a decent return on investment. It’s almost inconceivable that two more similarly expensive IRs licensed for Incheon make economic sense under current conditions. Licensees Caesars Entertainment and U.S. tribal group Mohegan Sun have yet to begin construction, and either could take Casino Filipino as a consolidation prize. Unless Paradise City proves a mammoth hit, significantly boosting Korean tourism and casino revenue, it will be the only IR in Incheon. Landing International, Genting’s successor in Jeju, could also reconsider its IR there and focus more on residential.

Incredible India, Ipanema

Spectrum Gaming Group, identifying industry trends since 2004, highlights new legislation creating opportunities in India and Brazil, as well as Japan. After tapping India as a 2016 target for overseas casinos, current legalization efforts in Maharashtra, home to commercial hub Mumbai and more than 112 million people, plus Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to increase foreign investment creates an intriguing scenario.

With Macau designated as China’s link to the Portuguese speaking world and the city’s casino expertise, Brazil could be a fantastic growth opportunity for SJM Holdings and its satellite operators, such as David Chow’s Macau Legend Developing, already betting on a casino in Portuguese speaking Cape Verde.

Southeastern exposures

There’s a lot happening in Southeast Asia beyond the Philippines. Vietnam and Cambodia have drafts of their long anticipated gaming laws in circulation. New national regulatory frameworks may not rescind bans on local play, but they will provide greater comfort levels for foreign investors and foreign players. That matters because only the Philippines give its own citizens unfettered access to its casinos, so Southeast Asia’s casinos rely on foreign customers.

Across Southeast Asia, integrated resorts are sprouting. In Phnom Penh, NagaWorld enters the IR big leagues when Naga2 opens late this year. The Grand Ho Tram, south of Ho Chi Minh City, is adding a second tower, doubling its room count to 1,100 between blue sea and world class golf course. Along Vietnam’s central coast, the consortium led by the family of late Hong Kong billionaire Cheng Yu-tung’s Chow Tai Fook Enterprises is building phase one of what, like Ho Tram, is a putative $4 billion IR.

Except for Naga2, those developments won’t be completed this year. But the commitments emphasize that Southeast Asia is a market of more than 600 million people that’s been largely ignored due to the powerful attraction of China. But as China becomes more about middle class travelers and less about high rollers, there’s more reason to target Southeast Asia — and everywhere else. In 2017 and beyond, Asian casino gaming isn’t just about China anymore.