How much Chinese money flows into gambling?

[Ian_Lee]

According to Forbes, the richest man in US is still Bill Gates and the 2nd richest man is still Warren Buffett. But the 3rd richest man is Sheldon Adelson -- his wealth climbed up from the 15th spot just one year ago.

How can he make so much money suddenly? Because of the Sands Casino in Macau that he opened 2 years ago. It is estimated that for every hour during the last two years, Sands Macau is earning US$1 million every HOUR (profit and not revenue).

And the revenues from Macau's casinos this year will outgrow those combined revenues from all the casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas.

So how much money have Chinese gamblers lost every year? I guess maybe enough to build a hospital in every major city.

And operating a casino is more profitable than publishing millions copies of Microsoft Office or owning hundreds of Walmart stores.

[skylee]

The Wynn Resorts Macau is just open. So do you think Stephen Wynn would be one of the top richest men in the world next year? And why hasn't Stanley Ho made it yet?

[flameproof]

Stanly Ho is ranked 84 in 2006

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/UMEN.html

Now, people who are sub 50 are still not really "poor". So, do not see the "only" 84 ranking negative. I would be even with an 10084 ranking fairly happy.

I would say that 90% of the Macau gambling money comes from China nowadays. A few month back I was in the Sands for a morning look. You see mainly PRCnese people changing good amounts of money. Changing HK$10,000 would be a quite low amount.

Stanley is whinging a lot now, sure, before he never had to face competition, and the new casinos are much nicer then the very run down Lisboa. I read some reports that Macau is going to overtake Las Vegas, so stay tuned.....

BTW, Macau is quite a beauty, even without visiting any casino.

[Ian_Lee]

I bursted into laughter when Stanley Ho said he would attract customers by offering complimentary free plate of Rice w/ Char Siu.

Gee. What year is this? Would any gambler care about Rice w/ Char Siu?

[hkkevin]

that's the natural born evil. As supporter of market mechanism, i do object for this time that macau introduced more private companies to do gambling business. It should be done by government, based on Hong Kong's MTR model. The gov't owned 100% shares of the company, but let it run by a board of directors and management teams. I don't see it hurts any efficiency of running a business in that model.

[skylee]

It's in the news that Macau has surpassed Las Vegas as the biggest-grossing gambling centre -> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/69eb76dc-ab1a-11db-b5db-0000779e2340.html

(I am never sure how the name of the place should be spelt and in that article both spellings are used. he he. )

[Koneko]

(I am never sure how the name of the place should be spelt and in that article both spellings are used. he he. )

What place? There were only two short paragraphs in the article.

Macao or Macau?

I normally spell it as Macao.

[skylee]

There were only two short paragraphs in the article.

I didn't know that only 2 paragraphs were shown. Here is the full article ->

Macao surpassed the Las Vegas Strip to become the world’s biggest gambling center in 2006, measured by total gambling revenue, according to industry analysts and government figures released today.

In the eight years since Macao, a former Portuguese colony on the coast near Hong Kong, was returned to Chinese control in 1999, it has experienced a huge boom in casino investment, and millions of mainland Chinese have been flooding into the tiny island territory to gamble.

As a result, gambling revenue soared by 22 percent in 2006, reaching $6.95 billion, according to figures released by the local administration today.

Las Vegas has not yet released its own full-year revenue statistics. But its cumulative figures were trailing those of Macao in the final months of last year, and analysts estimate that the 2006 total will come in around $6.5 billion.

Where Macao was once derided for its seedy gambling dens and endemic organized crime, it is now being referred to as Asia’s Las Vegas, and not just by the locals.

Hoping to ride the gold rush, some of the world’s biggest casino operators, including Las Vegas tycoons like Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian, have agreed to invest more than $20 billion to outfit Macao with new luxury hotels, giant casinos and V.I.P. suites to cater to the apparently enormous gambling appetite of the mainland Chinese.

Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legal, and it is only in recent years that many ordinary Chinese people have been able to get permission to visit the city. Last year, some 22 million visitors poured in, most of them from China.

For investors, one of the big lures is that, on average, the city’s gambling tables pull in about seven times more money than tables in Las Vegas. The winnings are a testament to how serious the gamblers are in this part of the world, despite the fact that income per person in Chinese averages just $1,700 a year.

Other cities in the region are eyeing Macao’s success and rethinking their tourism strategies. For instance, Singapore is now planning to build its own casino resort, and Hong Kong officials have talked about allowing casino gambling.

But few rivals will be able to try to match Macao, which already has 24 casinos and over 2,700 tables in operation. To accommodate even more visitors, the 10-square mile city of 470,000 residents is expanding its airport and reclaiming broad tracts of land from the sea.

The city’s transformation began in 2002, with the expiration of the Macao billionaire Stanley Ho’s colonial-era 40-year monopoly on gambling in the territory. New licenses were issued to a handful of competing operators as well as Mr. Ho, and a construction boom began.

The city now has two giant Las Vegas style casino-hotels, the Sands Macao and the $1.2 billion Wynn Macau, which opened late last year with 600 guest rooms and about 200 gambling tables.

Mr. Ho’s family of casinos and entertainment palaces are also expanding, betting that the casino and entertainment pie will keep his profits growing rapidly enough to further enrich his empire even though it is now shared it with competitors.

But perhaps no one in Macao has quite the ambitions of Mr. Adelson, who operates Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Mr. Adelson says he plans to spend $4 billion to build whole Vegas-style strip, including a a 10.5 million-square-foot hotel, casino, shopping mall and entertainment complex that would include the world’s largest casino.

Part of the plan among investors is to transform Macao into more of a destination for conventions, entertainment and leisure, rather than simply an arena for hard-core gamblers, many of whom drive across the border from China and sleep in their cars rather than rent a hotel room.

Some analysts say Macao, ruled by Portugal for 450 years, is an ideal spot for such a destination because about 2.2 billion people live within five hours’ flying time of the city.

And Macao’s growth since 2000 has been spectacular, largely because China has liberalized its travel policies and allowed more of its citizens to visit Macao and other parts of the world.

In 2001, for instance, Macao reported about $2 billion in gambling revenues. Industry analysts expect four times as much in 2007.

Though Macao appears to have overtaken the Las Vegas Strip in 2006, it still lags far behind the state of Nevada as a whole, which reported close to $12 billion in gambling revenue in 2005.

Still, the Chinese government is not wholeheartedly supportive of the Macao gambling boom, because the city seems to attract the corrupt as well as the merely sporting.

Some of Macao’s highest rollers have been caught gambling with government money or with cash siphoned off from state-owned companies rather than their own funds. In 2005, for instance, Beijing said that more than 8,700 “party members and cadres” were punished for gambling.

In one publicized case, a married couple embezzled more than $50 million from the state-run Bank of China to pay off gambling debts in Macao.

Some analysts have also warned about overinvestment and about overly rosy forecasts of gambling revenue growth. But most analysts and investors have dismissed such talk and instead have watched the flood of gamblers into Macao.

In an interview, Mr. Adelson once said that turning Macau into the next Las Vegas was not rocket science.

“This is a no-brainer,” he said. “If you build it, will they come? In my mind, not only will they come, but they’ll come in droves.”

[skylee]

As to how the name of the place should be spelt, the portal of its government website says, "Welcome to Macao SAR of the People's Republic of China" AND "Portal do Governo da RAE de Macau" AND "MACAU".

[Koneko]

That's right!

...the government of Macau considers both "Macao" and "Macau" to be the official English spelling of the name, whereas "Macau" remains the official spelling in Portuguese.

In comparison, the central government of the PRC consistently spells its name as "Macao" in English...

Extracted from Wikipedia.

Skylee:

哈，哈！原来你是我的“远亲”啊？！

我是一只馋嘴的 英国短毛猫。

你呢？

[skylee]

我是有16分1葡國血統的純種唐貓。

[Koneko]

葡國血統

嘻嘻，原来如此......

不好意思刚才还在你面前班门弄斧，研究怎么用英语拼写澳门呢！？

我真是有眼不识泰山。

一提起葡国，就让我想起葡式蛋撻!

几天前，我刚在Covent Garden的一家巴西咖啡馆点了一个葡式蛋撻。

那蛋撻不知有多难吃啊！

还是Lisbon的最好吃！他们还让我亲自在蛋撻上撒肉桂粉，多好阿！

[Ian_Lee]

Now even the leftist newspaper cited such astronomical figure -- RMB 600 billion -- mostly public funds carried by corrupt officials and businessmen to Macau and other places for gambling every year:

http://paper.wenweipo.com/2007/05/24/YO0705240024.htm