Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | October 2012 8 I nvestors in Macau’s six listed casino operating companies havebeen spending the second half of 2012 absorbing the shock of gaming revenues that may increase this year by the equivalent of only one Las Vegas Strip, and maybe not that. This is not to be flippant, although Macau has gotten so big that comparisons with Las Vegas have come to be seen as invidious, or certainly irrelevant, apples and oranges, the two markets being so dissimilar in their fundamentals. As we know, Macau’s emergence in the last decade as the largest gambling market in the world isn’t owing to one-arm bandits, $5 blackjack and cheap buffets, but to a growing elite of high-net- worth individuals in mainland China with a seemingly bottomless appetite for risk and the ability to plunk down hundreds of thousands on a hand of baccarat. But this is changing, too, and not Higher margins—the Sands Macao main floor Critical Mass VIP play will always grab the headlines, but it’s the small bettors who are writing the future of a more profitable Macau Casinos (like Galaxy StarWorld, shown here) are getting better at identifying lucrative main-floor gamblers and rewarding them accordingly.