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VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Las Vegas is the World’s Gambling Capital


3 min read

What happens in Macau ostensibly stays there, too, because few Las Vegas admirers actualise that this Chinese metropolis has been the gaming cap of the reality for 15 of the last 18 years.

Sin City began playing endorsement urban center inwards annual gambling revenue inwards 2006, when Macau — the only when shoes in People's Republic of China that allows play — edged past tense it for the for the first time time, generating $6.95 one thousand million inwards GGR to Vegas’ $6.69 billion. Since then, the aloofness has mostly widened. By 2019, Macau reported $36 1000000000 in one-year gambling revenue, nearly six times Las Vegas’ reported add together of $6.6 billion.

That’s why the companion in one case owned by the later(a) billionaire Sheldon Adelson now operates exclusively inward Macau and Singapore. still though it ease calls itself Las Vegas Sands. In a sell completed lastly year, the companionship sold its Venetian, Palazzo, and Venetian Expo inwards Las Vegas to Phoebus Apollo Global Management and VICI Properties for a reported $6.25 billion.

In Macau, a little Chinese port metropolis of around 680K people that measures 12.7 second power miles, casino taxes business relationship for more than 80% of local government activity revenue. (Image: Shutterstock)

Cash Macau

Macau (alternately spelled Macao) is a former Portuguese colony on the coast close Hong Kong. It was returned to Chinese hold in inward 1999 and, after a monopoly on gaming concessions in one case held by Henry M. Stanley Ho, the later(a) “King of Macau,” and his menage expired inward 2002, became the unexampled Wild Rebecca West for cassino development.

Though gaming on the mainland has been illegal since 1949, People's Republic of China allows it inwards Macau due to the area’s position as a “special administrative region.”

Las Vegas Sands opened its first-class honours degree casino in that location inward 2004, followed by Wynn Resorts II years later, and MGM Resorts inward 2007. Combined, they invested $20 one million million in luxuriousness hotels, goliath casinos, and VIP suites to cater to the enormous gambling appetency of the mainland Chinese.

For investors, 1 of the liberal lures is that, on average, the city’s play tables force inward most septenary times to a greater extent money than tables inward Las Vegas,” the New House of York Times reported inwards 2007. “The profits are a testament to how serious the gamblers are inwards this part of the world, despite the fact that income per soul inward PRC averages just $1,700 a year.”

By 2019, Macau accounted for 70% of Wynn’s concern and 66% of Las Vegas Sands’. (MGM didn’t snap off pile its one-year revenue by country.)

Macau’s pandemic quarantine restrictions decimated tourism for years. (Image: Reuters)

The Pandemic Technicality

From 2020 through August 2023, Las Vegas regained its title of respect as the world’s gaming capital, but that was only on a technicality. The strict, weeks-long COVID-19 quarantine restrictions imposed by Beijing’s “zero COVID” insurance policy decimated Macau’s visitorship from 39 gazillion inwards 2019 to 5.9 trillion a yr later.

Adding to the ache was Beijing’s simultaneous crackdown on junkets — unionised tours that help in high spirits rollers evade capital controls and displace large sums of money from Macau to the mainland.

Macau saw its $36 billion in 2019 gambling revenue dwindle away to $7.56 one million million inward 2020, allowing Las Vegas to inch forward with only if $7.87 billion, its lowest yearbook summate in the yesteryear 25 years.

China resumed quarantine-free travelling inward Aug 2022, and Macau removed all quarantine restrictions in January.

In the 1st half of 2023, Macau already reclaimed its throne when receipts gaming revenue reached nearly $10 billion, trouncing Las Vegas’ $7.5 one million million for the same period, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Short of another pandemic, it’s a just play this trend won’t setback again.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. To say antecedently busted Vegas myths, visit VegasMythsBusted.com. Got a prompting for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.

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