THE fire that sent clouds of smoke billowing from the roof of the Galaxy casino complex on Macau’s glitzy Cotai strip on January 8th had an ominous look about it. Since the tiny enclave’s gaming industry, once a monopoly, was opened to competition in 2002, it has rapidly become the world’s biggest. It is now seven times larger than that of Las Vegas, thanks mainly to visitors from the Chinese mainland where betting is banned. The boom has given the sleepy former Portuguese colony the world’s fourth-highest GDP per head. Nearly half its output is linked to gaming.
Yet Macau’s “casino capitalism” is, like the Galaxy’s unfinished roof, looking charred. Having risen remorselessly, betting revenues declined by 2.6% in 2014. In December they plummeted by 30% year-on-year. The economy, too, shrank in the third quarter. The downturn will be hard to reverse.
China’s economic slowdown is one reason for the end of the boom. A casino attendant says a smoking ban has also deterred punters. (Around him, many seats are empty; under-employed croupiers stare vacantly, while a handful of smokers puff forlornly in a corner...Continue reading
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