Incredibly bullish article on Asian gambling

This article is one of the most bullish articles on Asian casinos I have read.

He predicts Singapore passing the Vegas strip in 2011 (something I have expressed serious doubts about), and Macau reaching US$27 billion by 2011.

I found the website for Singapore Casino Regulatory Authority but it does not list revenue unlike every other gaming control board website.

Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau or in Portuguese Direcção de Inspecção e Coordenação de Jogos or DICJ

What happens in a socialist country like the PRC, when an individual loses all their assets gambling in Macau casino's? Is there such a thing as bankrupcy?

Losses at the current rates and magnitude have to have a negative impact on the individuals taking the hits, as well as their families and friends. Look at the broken lives in the streets of Las Vegas. Who is picking up the pieces in China?


For this reason, I suspect that Singapore will take steps to actually reduce the amount lost by local gamblers. Their government is much more sensitive to the negative impact of large gambling losses and addiction. I think the first step will be to raise the entrance fee, and then put some kind of cap on losses for locals. There is already a time limit, but I don't know what kind of impact that has on their action. It may actually push local gamblers to make larger bets, since they know their window of opportunity is only open for a limited time.

Whether this lowers the revenue, I don't know, since the mix of gamblers may be mostly "foreigners"

Singapore put the HK$100 entrance fee in place for locals, but it isn't enough to deter many locals.

Many decades ago when I was in Austria, they wouldn't permit locals into their casinos at all. They wanted a passport to prove you were a foreigner.

One always thinks of Singapore as being almost too moralistic of a government. It wasn't that long ago that their practice of caning people was being discussed in our newspapers.

Legal Caning in Singapore demonstrated on a dummy


As someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, I always thought of it as almost a reactionary state. They have very strict laws controlling alcohol. I was surprised to see them adopt gaming as whole-heartedly as they did.

I was watching a movie made in 1949 and one of the characters said "Theres so much corruption and depravity in Singapore that its impossible for a normal person to sin there."