Macau is also looking for ways to diversify its economy away from gambling, with the city’s administration secretary, Cheong Weng Chon, asking gaming companies to invest “in non-gaming businesses” after renewing their casino licenses last year. Authorities have arrested two high-profile junket operators since November 2021. Just 5.9 million people visited Macau in 2020, down from 39 million just one year earlier.īeijing also cracked down on so-called junkets, organized tours that allegedly help high rollers evade capital controls and move large sums of money back and forth across the border with Macau. Macau, like other jurisdictions in China, imposed strict weeks-long quarantines on arrival, including from the neighboring city of Hong Kong. Yet the complete collapse of travel during the pandemic hit the city hard.
Macau’s casinos generated about $36 billion in revenue in 2019 Nevada, despite being home to Las Vegas, reported just under $12 billion in gambling revenue over the same period. Before the COVID pandemic, the gaming industry contributed over half the city’s GDP and employed about 17% of the city’s 600,000 residents. (The city, like its neighbor Hong Kong, operates under a different legal structure from that of mainland China). Macau is the only region in China where casino gambling is legal. “Asia remains the backbone of the company,” Goldstein said back in 2021.
