Industry News
Macau -- the only legal place to make bets in China -- has posted a 47% increase in yearly gambling revenue, outpacing Las Vegas and pushing it even further ahead of the Las Vegas strip in terms of total gambling revenue.
Led by Stanley Ho's Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM), and new American entrants like Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS.N), which opened the world's largest casino in Macau last summer, the city's gaming trade is booming.
Figures released recently by Macau's Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau indicate that casinos in Macau took in gross gambling revenue of $10.34 billion last year, up by 47% from $7.05 billion the year earlier.
The massive growth comes after a huge expansion. The building boom took off after Macau, which has only half a million residents, was handed back to China by Portugal in 1999.
A total of four new casinos opened on Macau last year, including Las Vegas Sands' massive Venetian Macao on the Cotai Strip, and MGM Mirage's (MGM.N) startling new MGM Grand Macau casino resort on the main strip.
Another casino opened last month and five more are slated to start up this year, plus as many as nine next year, experts said.
Revenue is still very strong. As of the end of December, Macau had 4,375 gaming tables and 13,267 slot machines in 28 casinos. That is significantly up from 2,762 tables and 6,546 slots in 24 casinos at the same time a year before.
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By contrast, Las Vegas, which has major development plans in the pipeline, is growing much more slowly.
Gambling is a much more mature market in the U.S. and is dealing with how to sustain growth in the face of a possible downturn in the U.S. economy.
Casinos on the Las Vegas strip took in gambling revenue of $6.83 billion last year, according to Nevada's Gaming Control Board on Tuesday, up 2.1%.
All of Nevada, which includes the rest of Las Vegas and gambling outposts such as Reno and areas around Lake Tahoe, posted annual gambling revenue of $12.85 billion for 2007, up 1.8% from the year earlier.
Even more growth is expected in Macau this coming year, as more casinos are built on the main peninsula and the Cotai Strip, and the government improves infrastructure to allow more visitors.
That means more potential gains for operators on the island, which include local firm Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd (0027.HK), Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts Ltd (WYNN.O) and Melco PBL Entertainment (Macau) Ltd (MPEL.O), a joint venture between Stanley Ho's son Lawrence's Melco International Development Ltd (0200.HK) Ltd and Crown Ltd CWN.AX of Australia.
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