Macau Continues Explosive Gambling Growth

Gambling revenues in Macau continue to increase at an incredible rate, with year-over-year revenues up 57% in August of 2011. Gambling revenue totaled $3.09 billion in August, despite losses in financial markets around the world.

In 2006, Macau became the largest gambling market in the world, overtaking the Las Vegas Strip. Now, Macau may actually manage to bring in more than five times as much revenue as the Strip in 2011.

 The growth is attributed to the number of high rollers from mainland China who have continued to flock to Macau in ever greater numbers.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, RBS analyst Philip Tulk believes that the growth isn’t set to stop anytime soon. According to their report, Macau’s gambling venue is up 47% so far in 2011 against the same months in 2010. That comes on the heels of a 58% growth in 2010.

However, growth is expected to slow down, if for no other reason than that it will be hard to continue growing a customer base at the current rates. According to the WSJ report, Turk believes that growth will end up being about 45% for all of 2011 over 2010, with growth falling to the still impressive levels of 18% in 2012, and 16% in 2013.

While many local companies have owned casinos in Macau for generations, many large American casino firms are now taking full advantage of the Macau market. Corporations including Mynn Resorts, MGM Resorts and Las Vegas Sands have all opened casinos in the Macau market in recent years. However, as the Wall Street Journal report notes, the largest casino owner in the market is still Stanley Ho, whose SJM Holdings casinos take in about a third of all gambling revenue in Macau.