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The Gambling Meccas
The World Casino Scene
The Gambling Meccas - An Online Players Union Report
Here’s an easy quiz: what U.S. city hold rights to being The Gambling Mecca in North America?
Whoever (as some will) says Atlantic City will be off the mark by a relatively considerable sum of gambling revenues - but not by as much as most of us would at first imagine! A.C is called “the poor man’s Vegas” by some, and Vegas does reign atop, but not by a far cry, nor any large disproportion. Atlantic City casinos hauled in $5.02 billions in gambling revenues last year, 2005 (not shabby for a 40,000 people community - actually astounding!), as opposed to the $6.4 billions that Las Vegas casinos raked in (a community of 376,000: 9.5 times A.C.’s size).
The bi-products of gambling
Apart from the revenues generated from the action at the tables or machines, there’s the inevitable bi-product of monies generated outside of the gambling venues: such as hotel stays, restaurants, and entertainment. That’s where Las Vegas leaves Atlantic City to eat its dusty trail, with numbers absolutely disproportionate. Where it’s close in gambling numbers: rounded off, it’s 6-5, which would make for a close, but action-filled baseball game’s score.
For the ‘side revenues’, it would make for a 7-1 ‘laugher’, with Vegas winning the game; again, those are rounded in billions. This shows that Las Vegas visitors actually spend some more money away from the casino floors than on them, while it’s quite the opposite in A.C., where the proportion is 5-1, in the exact opposite direction; for every 5 gamblers, 1 stays for the night, while the other 4 head back to where they came from. Needless to say that this makes for a lot of ‘day trippers’: very understandable when we look at the heavily populated nearby centers.
The big question
Here’s a second question (not so easy): what city hold bragging rights of being The Gambling Mecca in the world? Could it be Las Vegas again, as it’s pretty well been so for the previous half-century…? Has someone else overtaken that luxurious jewel built in the desert, a true wonder that ranks amongst the top vacation destinations in the world?
The answer is… close: but Macau took over! As of this year’s third quarter’s end, September 30; the facts are based official figures, compiled in October, according to the Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau; gross revenues for gaming and gambling from casinos totaled some $4.821 billions U.S., while Las Vegas casinos made $4.388 billions U.S. during the same period; that amounts to near half a billion U.S. lead, so odds are that Macau will be the new world leader - in gambling revenues - at years’ end, and might hold that lead for much, much longer: Macau currently had seven new casino projects approved, with some of them under construction, and at different degrees of completion. And it’s not as if Macau had been slowly and gradually creeping up - this was a sling-shot zip by that’d give a Nascar driver a wide grin.
For the time being, Las Vegas, in consideration for the ‘outside the casino floors’* revenues still holds a slight margin over Macau, and probably will at year’s end. Macau has been in a tremendous progression in gaming revenues for the last 4-5 years; observers in the know do not forecast an end to this progression, and Las Vegas’ overall* lead should fall to Macau within another year at most, and for keeps (to consider, the large new casino that has just begun raking in profits late this past October, and the seven new casino projects underway in Macau).
About the rival’s country and the game of Keno
For ‘believe it or not’ fans out there, it’s an absolutely fantastic fact that it took over 200 (!) Las Vegas casinos to accumulate the above mentioned numbers, while only 22 - discounting the latest October’s addition - Macau casinos did it! That is some huge amount of ‘patacas’ (their currency’s unit) for only 22 casinos. At a near tenfold proportion of casinos, given a similar amount of players, this would mean that an average U.S. player’s bankroll of say 100 US Dollars (a more than conservative estimate), would have his Macau counterpart holding 1000 US bucks.
China is not exactly a stranger to gambling. In fact: China is where Keno originated, at around 200 B.C.; it was introduced by Cheung Leung in the beginning of the Han Dynasty, and gained immense popularity country-wide: so much so that the military almost completed the building of The Great Wall of China during Cheung’s lifetime, a monumental task begun in between the 7th and 6th century BC,. Keno also became known as the White Pigeon Game, because carrier pigeons were used to send the winning numbers from the completed games in the larger cities to smaller villages, or hamlets’ awaiting hopefuls.
The ancient scrolls
Ancient scrolls, not unlike today’s media, sometimes contained official facts, and sometimes information that was more or less a matter of the opinions of the readers themselves. Here’s one such story: The new Han Dynasty, under Cheung was experiencing difficulties in producing revenue for his army, a serious matter; the rumor mill from these times has it that even the citizens of his very own city, and from all over were refusing to contribute anymore to the military’s War Fund!
Cheung used creativity instead of force, (after all, he did have the full army’s control at hand), and invented a game of chance (but with a very profitable built-in ’House Edge’) to generate him the funds needed for his army. This game, one of drawn numbers, was the origin of today’s universally known game of Keno. The game was an instant success and the rest is history; the Great Wall itself is one of the greatest wonders of the world, if only for its sheer grandeur: with all of its parts the wall runs for 7,300 Kilometers, or just about 4,500 miles long. To help you evaluate what this distance means: a flight from New York to L.A. spans - ‘only’ - 2,475 miles!
The new champion - the new Mecca of the gambling world is now - Macau!
Many observers saw this as inevitable, and it’s been in the cards for a while, as China has been coming of age in a hurry and in big way. The U.S. and China are both huge land masses, and with Canada for comparison, we’re looking at what might as well be triplets, as far as country sizes in square miles. Let’s put aside Canada, a mite by comparison with its population at the 33 million mark: it doesn’t belong in the same ballpark.
Of human clusters
That leaves us with the 2 giants, with practically the same land mass*, but with a huge difference population-wise. Rounded to millions, the U.S.A weights in at 290, while China makes the scales creak at 1,316; the disproportion is 4.5 Chinese human beings for every one American! It isn’t any wonder that the Chinese can form clusters such as Macau.
The new champ reigns - but we’re rooting for the challenger to take his crown back!
But the rival seems to be on heavy duty ‘steroids’, figuratively speaking.
And it looks like this not going to happen and there’s no reversal foreseeable, if we base ourselves on demography experts that tell us that China is still growing at a 130 million people a year clip (a 20% birth rate, offset by a 10% fatality rate, the latter has been a flat line for over 12 years). For two decades, ending in 1972, China’s growth rate was steadily over 20%, so some things do improve. What’s unreal about all of this, if you look at the U.S. population growth below, is that if China’s growth ratio were to dip to just 1% (!), it would still produce more bodies than Americans by a 6.5 factor.
During this period, 2004 and 2005 (all figures originate from 2006), the U.S. population has grown by a more reasonable 2 million people on the average. Sheer insane numbers can’t be beaten, lest the growing nation hits the inevitable wall, where it’s eaten itself right out of food; this is exactly what has happened to a number of countries who would face self-extermination by starvation, if not for outside help from more fortunate nations.
May Macau’s riches enhance the average Chinese life’s quality; we truly wish you the best.
Demographic Source Information: Pearson Education, Canada, 2006 - all addressed figures.
Some related facts.
* The top 5 countries, based on land area.
Country / Area (square miles) / Population
Russia / 6,592,735 / 142,893,540
Canada / 3,855,081 / 33,098,932
United States / 3,718,691 / 298,444,215
China / 3,705,386 / 1,313,973,713
Brazil / 3,286,470 / 188,078,227
With regards,
__________________
Thatchatch
OPU# 4113
OPU Certified
Last edited by Thatchatch : 11-11-2025 at 10:38 PM.
Reason: Misc.
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good report
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