Word: macau
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...they built the casinos, the gamblers would come. That was the idea, anyway. Since a 40-year gambling monopoly ended in 2002 and the Sands Macau, the first foreign-operated casino in Macau, opened its doors two years later, that has certainly been the case. Over the past four years, the casino giants of the tiny Chinese territory, including Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Stanley Ho, have enjoyed sky-high growth rates and billions of dollars in revenue...
...wake of the faltering global economy, Macau is not such a sure bet anymore. The problem is that some of those giants embarked on overzealous building sprees - since 2004, the number of casinos in Macau has more than doubled to 31 - and now the global credit crisis is threatening to topple at least one of them. Adelson's company, Las Vegas Sands, has undertaken an aggressive expansion plan over the past few years, winning the bid to build the $4.6 billion Marina Bay Sands casino-resort in Singapore and developing a $743 million casino-resort in Pennsylvania, among other projects...
...Gabriel Chan, a Credit Suisse gaming analyst in Hong Kong. While operators are still making profits, the Sands isn't the only one that may have difficulty finding cash to finance its newest developments. Chan says the Galaxy Entertainment Group, which is building the Cotai Mega Resorts in Macau, is also likely to run into trouble. Any additional job cuts will further kindle discontent among blue-collar Macanese workers, who have long complained about losing construction jobs to less expensive mainland workers...
...Earlier this year, Macau's government had already started to hit the brakes. In April, Macau's Chief Executive Edmund Ho announced that no new gambling licenses would be issued to additional operators, and that current concession-holders would not be able to apply for additional gaming tables or slot machines. That set a limit on future building, but Beijing was also concerned about the volume of mainland tourists frittering away their money at the tables in Macau - the only place on Chinese soil where gambling is legal. Each day, crowds of hopeful punters cross into Macau from Zhuhai...
...long run however, all this may be good news, says Desmond Lam, a senior research fellow at the University of South Australia who specializes in casino marketing and Chinese gaming. He says the current stumbling blocks may force Macau to address some of the economic and social problems that have started to fester beneath those glowing numbers. "On a whole, [the slowdown] is good for Macau," he says. "It was going too fast." Since 2003, gaming revenue has increased by an average of 30% per year, eclipsing that of the Las Vegas Strip by 2006. With...