After swiftly falling revenues since the beginning of 2009; third quarter casino revenues are starting to look good. Stocks belonging to major casinos rose when third quarter results were announced. They still weren’t where they were last year, but any increase is looking good to casino operators and stockholders.
A portion of the rise in revenue could have been generated from the Chinese gambling endeavors in Macau, China. Las Vegas Sands currently has projects in Macau and Singapore putting them in the cat bird seat for expansion. Wynn Resorts also has casinos in Macau. The revenue from the Asian gaming venues helped to raise the dismal revenues of the company’s’ Las Vegas Casinos.
There are six licenses available in the Macau China Market and three are owned by American based companies while three others are owned by Chinese interests. Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Properties are the American interests and SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment Group, and Melco Crown Entertainment are the Chinese holdings. All companies had positive numbers in stocks during third quarter of this year from up 8% to up 36%. This upward trend helped the US holdings to raise their revenues significantly after a period of loss in the stock market.
Las Vegas Sands Corp owns and operates The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem in the US. It owns Sands Macao, The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel and the Four Seasons Hotel Macao in China. The Bethlehem property is the newest open property opening in May of this year and there is development on a property to be opened in Singapore in 2010.
Wynn properties are many but some of the more popular ones are the Bellagio and Encore. The company opened Wynn Macau in China in 2006.
MGM owns MGM Grands and MGM Mirages in the US and MGM Grand in Macau, China.
Macau is a small territory on the southern coast of China near Hong Kong. It was settled by Europeans in the 16th century and was actually owned by Portugal until it was handed over to the Chinese government in 1999. Gambling has been legal in Macau when it was owned by the Portuguese in 1847 and the game that was played even before the casinos were built is the game of Pai Gow, played with Chinese dominoes. In 1937 a small casino was built but it only catered to Chinese games so its growth wasn’t as expansive as it could have been. The current casino culture began in the 1990′s and the building and expansion of the casinos has changed the gambling atmosphere into one of Las Vegas glitz and glamour.
Some analysis fear that the Macau market is following trends from the US market and expanding too fast. The economy has been named the culprit in falling casino revenues in the US and this recession is affecting overseas economies as well. It is feared that the upward trend in Asian markets are not high enough to support all the expansion in China, Singapore, Hong Kong and soon there will be decline in revenues in Asia.
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