Pace T.S. Eliot, April was not the cruelest month for Macao. Quite the contrary: The protectorate posted gambling revenues of $1.72 billion, a single-month record. Galaxy Entertainment (whose new Cotai Strip™ pleasure palace is pictured, above) brought up the rear, along with MGM Grand Macau. Even if Stanley Ho is really on his deathbed, his Sociedade de Jogos de Macau continues to pull market share away from Las Vegas Sands in tiny increments. For April, SJM’s market share was 33% to Sands’ 21%. Wynn Resorts continues to get the most bang per gaming position, its 14% of market share good for third place, edging Melco Crown Entertainment‘s 13%.
Due to technical difficulties, we had to remove an earlier posting about a proposed Macanese law that would effectively put a brake on casino development without explicitly doing so. To quell unrest over imported labor, the edict — if passed — would impose a 1:1 ratio on the number of construction workers who could be brought from the Mainland vis-a-vis Macanese laborers. This would max out Sands’ labor pool at 4,000 workers … and it needs 10,000 in order to meet Sheldon Adelson‘s aggressive development schedule.
Between this an a report that 4/5 of the table games still unallocated will go to Hong Kong-based Galaxy, it looks as though Peking is trying to tilt the playing field just a bit toward the home team. Considering that Galaxy was hitched to Sands in a government-arranged shotgun wedding, then jilted by Adelson, it won’t begrudge any gains that come its way at Sands’ expense.
