New gaming records in Macau

From Macau News.com.mo

Macau, China, 4 Apr -
Macau's casino sector hit a new monthly record last month when its gross receipts from games of chance reached 20.08 billion patacas (US$ 2.510 billion), the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) announced last week.

It was the first time that the sector's monthly gaming receipts exceeded 20 billion patacas.

The March receipts exceeded those for the whole of 2001, which stood at 18.11 billion patacas.

The previous monthly record stood at 19.86 billion patacas in February, when the year-on-year growth in gaming receipts was 47.7 percent.

The revenue in March rose 48 percent from the same month of last year.

The sector's revenues in the first quarter reached a record 58.52 billion patacas, up 42.9 percent year on year
.
The first-quarter receipts exceeded those for the whole of 2006, which amounted to 56.6 billion patacas.

Macau overtook the Las Vegas Strip as the world's biggest gambling market in 2006 and last year raked in four times the revenue of Nevada's "Sin City".

Union Gaming analyst Grant Govertsen told Dow Jones he expected Macau's gambling revenue to grow to more than five times the size of the Las Vegas Strip this year.

Last year's gaming receipts hit a record 133.2 billion patacas.

(MacauNews)

Note: 1 Macau Pacata has approximately the same value as HK$1
US$1 = HK$7.77

I did post this note on 1 April. But it's amazing. The biggest increase in history for Clark County Gaming was 24% back in 1972, and the average was about 9.6% before it started going down.

Quote: pacomartin April 1

Macau gaming revenues top $2.5 billion in March
With the average Vegas strip revenue $480m over the last year, it seems that Macau is now firmly at 5 times the level of the strip.

But it should still get a lot higher. The market also will benefit when Hong Kong-based Galaxy Entertainment opens a new hotel-casino in late spring.

In the calendar year 2005 Macau had gaming revenue of 47.134 billion Hong Kong dollars fairly close to the annual revenue of the Vegas strip (roughly $6 billion). At the time there were 17 casinos, 15 operated by STDM(Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, SA ) who had the monopoly since 1963, 1 by Galaxy Entertainment Group (GEG) and the Venetian Sands .

GEG operated the Waldo Casino and hotel near the ferry terminal (opened July 2004).