Macao: Light and darkness

If you read Bloomberg News last week, Macao is tantamount to Disneyland, at least if you visit Venetian Macao, which is “home to a fake grand canal, crooning gondoliers and brands from McDonald’s to Dior.” The amenity-laden style of Sheldon Adelson is causing his mass-market business to grow exponentially faster than that of longtime rival Stanley Ho, next to whom Adelson is a plaster saint. Shopping malls just don’t figure in the business plan of Ho or whoever is pulling Sociedade de Jogos de Macao‘s strings these days.

The casino oligarch even said in 2009 (before the numbers proved him wrong) that trying to emulate the styles of Atlantic City or Las Vegas — two very different animals in and of themselves — “would not be a successful strategy.” And now he is paying the price, as mass-market business grows by a third every year. Ho’s Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau won’t even be operating on the Cotai Strip until 2016, although its raggle-taggle collection of casinos in the older parts of the city still dominates Sands for VIP business.

Another vestige of the Ho Era, the Triads are making evidently making their presence felt. A gaming attorney was recently beaten with bricks on a public street. Even more brazenly, casino investor Ng Man-sun was attacked while dining in his own New Century Hotel, home to Ho’s Greek Mythology Casino. And Triad leader (and Ho associate) “Broken-Tooth Koi” is free to roam the streets again. Broken-Tooth’s smash-and-grab tactics are thought to be out of place in present-day Macao, but criminal involvement has found subtler means of asserting itself.

U.S.-owned casinos cannot extend credit in Macao, so they rely on junket firms (who can). But, according to former Hong Kong intelligence officer Steve Vickers, “You won’t find their names on the front but the hard reality is that Chinese junkets are largely controlled by Triad societies.” So the likes of Sands China, Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts International must turn a blind eye to the very forces they are trying to elbow out of Macao. This detente is unlikely to hold the recent trend of outright thuggery continues to assert itself. The government of China has shown no compunction about summarily executing Triad figures in the past and, if it needs to send a message, it knows how to send one — forcefully.