Macau has become the world's top gambling destination, analysts said yesterday, after the latest earnings figures from the southern Chinese territory showed it had probably topped the famous Las Vegas strip.
The upbeat estimate was made after the city posted figures earlier this week showing casino revenue in September had soared 37 per cent year over year to $576-million (U.S.).
By the estimates of leading Vegas-based leisure industry consultancy Globalysis Ltd., Macau is just ahead of the cluster of casinos on Nevada's most famous boulevard.
"Yep, the recent numbers look like our estimate for 2006 will come in line -- currently, the monthly run rate for Las Vegas would put it at an annualized revenue rate of $6.6-billion, approximately," Globalysis partner Jonathan Galaviz said.
"At Macau's current month run rate, it now exceeds that of the Las Vegas strip by about $20-million dollars, so it looks."
Gambling earnings have boomed in Macau since 2001, when the government ended tycoon Stanley Ho's 40-year monopoly on casinos in the city and allowed foreign operators to move in. The result has been a rush of up to $25-billion of mostly American cash into the once-moribund century-old local industry.
Growth has been fuelled by a similarly explosive rise in tourism from China, following the relaxation of travel restrictions from the mainland in the wake of the former Portuguese enclave's reversion to Chinese rule in 1999.
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