U.S. casinos’ bet on Macau pays off

Macau— sometimes called Macao — has not only overtaken Las Vegas as the world’s top gambling market, but its casinos are rebounding smartly even as gambling “remains stuck in America’s recessionary mud,” as Moody’s Senior Vice President Keith Foley puts it.

In October, Macau gambling revenue hit an all-time high of $1.59 billion after setting a record just two months earlier. The Chinese New Year’s holiday, which lasts for about two weeks starting on Feb. 14, is one of the busiest gambling periods of the year and should provide another boost to business as Asian workers take vacation and head for the casinos en masse.

The emergence of Macau — about 40 miles west of Hong Kong— as a gambling powerhouse is a sign of China’s economic might and the spending potential of the country’s 1.3 billion occupants. In just a few years, American gambling companies have seen their Macau properties become as vital, if not more so, to their bottom line as their more established Las Vegas properties. The global economic downturn has also highlighted the need for U.S. companies to diversify their gambling operations. At the moment, Asia is as promising a market as any for gambling.

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