{"id":10970,"date":"2013-06-17T12:46:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T20:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10970"},"modified":"2013-06-17T12:46:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T20:46:14","slug":"macao-light-and-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/macao-light-and-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Macao: Light and darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"If you read Bloomberg News<\/em> last week, Macao<\/strong> is tantamount to Disneyland<\/strong>, at least if you visit Venetian Macao<\/strong>, which is “home to a fake grand canal, crooning gondoliers and brands from McDonald\u2019s<\/strong> to Dior<\/strong>.” The amenity-laden style of Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> is causing his mass-market business to grow exponentially faster<\/a> than that of longtime rival Stanley Ho<\/strong>, 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<\/strong>‘s strings these days.<\/p>\n

The casino oligarch even said in 2009 (before the numbers proved him wrong) that trying to emulate the styles of Atlantic City<\/strong> or Las Vegas<\/strong> — 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<\/strong> won’t even be operating on the Cotai Strip<\/strong> until 2016, although its raggle-taggle collection of casinos in the older parts of the city still dominates Sands for VIP business.<\/p>\n

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Another vestige of<\/strong> the Ho Era, the Triads<\/strong> are making evidently making their presence felt. A gaming attorney was recently beaten with bricks<\/a> on a \"\"public street. Even more brazenly, casino investor Ng Man-sun<\/strong> was attacked while dining in his own New Century Hotel<\/strong>, home to Ho’s Greek Mythology Casino<\/strong>. And Triad leader (and Ho associate) “Broken-Tooth Koi<\/strong>” is free to roam the streets again<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

U.S.-owned casinos cannot<\/strong> extend credit in Macao, so they rely on \"\"junket firms (who can). But, according to former Hong Kong<\/strong> intelligence officer Steve Vickers<\/strong>, “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<\/strong>, Wynn Resorts<\/strong> and MGM Resorts Internationa<\/strong>l must turn a blind eye to the very forces they are trying to elbow out of Macao. This detente<\/em> is unlikely to hold the recent trend of outright thuggery continues to assert itself. The government of China<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s to Dior.” The amenity-laden style of Sheldon … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[62,53,11,25,12,61,32,87,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10971,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10970\/revisions\/10971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}