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Macau Edges Out Las Vegas as the New Gambling Hub

On April 4, 2007, Macau announced that they have already "outstripped" Las Vegas as the largest casino area, producing around $7 billion or around $8.58 billion back in 2006. The 22 casinos that can be found in Macau produced about 16.7 billion patacas during the final quarter of the year, which had total gaming profits of around 56.2 billion patacas or about $8.83 billion.

On the other hand, the casinos in Las Vegas, like the Venetian and MGM resorts, have only produced around $6.6 billion or an equivalent of $8.09 billion. Las Vegas Sands is one of the first companies that built a casino in the former Portuguese territory back in 2004.

The resorts under Steve Wynn and MGM have also built some casinos in Macau because of the liberalization of the regulations in the territory. Australian based Crown Casinos and the Galaxy Casino in Hong Kong also built property in Macau. Back in October, casino gambling analysts commented that Macau has already surpassed Las Vegas in gambling earnings.

Gambling profits in Macau have grown since 2001 when the Chinese Government took over Macau and effectively ended the monopoly of Stanley Ho. But that does not mean that Mr. Ho is out of the picture, as he continues to build many casinos in Macau.

Analyst, Jonathan Galvon from Globalysis, said that this just shows that Macau is on the right path for development. The country's GDP and casino continued to improve as tourists flock to the area. About 22 million people visited Macau last year, 12 million from mainland China and about 7 million tourists came from Hong Kong.

 

Wednesday, May 02 , 2007
Brian Letendre