Hitherto it’s been world gambling’s biggest market; bigger even than storied Las Vegas. But the warning graffiti, increasingly, is being scrawled on walls throughout the unique betting enclave of Macau: “Get out of town before it’s too late.”
The real powers that be in this former Portuguese colonial entrepôt, now a China Special Administrative Region, want gambling gone, and they’ve been tightening the political garrote for the last two years with a flurry of incremental anti-gambling legislation since the post-Covid-19 re-opening.
First tough measures to kill hyper-lucrative junkets, then harpoon runs against gaming whales, crackdowns against currency exchanges, the appointment of a hardline bureaucrat and CCP loyalist and now serious consideration of banning all forms of gambling promotion and advertising.
The message, for those smart enough to get their head out of the sand, is “so long, it was good while it lasted”, say veteran Macau watchers and gambling industry insiders, who debriefed iGamingFuture on condition of anonymity.
And just one event–say a military-imposed “reunification” between mainland China and the island of Taiwan–could deal the coup de grâce to Macau and its many mega international casino-resort backers, among them Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM from the United States.
Macau, the only place in China where gambling is legal, has some 40-odd casinos.
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According to its Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, known by its Portuguese acronym, DICJ, the territory generated Macanese Pataca MOP226.78 billion in 2024, the equivalent of (£23.63bn/US$32.18bn/€27.45bn), almost 24 percent more than the previous year – far outstripping the US$15.6 billion (£11.45bn/€13.3bn) of Las Vegas.
Now Macau’s Economic and Technological Development Bureau is opening a month-long review of the entrepot’s 35-year-old Advertising Activities Law.
“When addressing gambling advertisements, the current Law No. 16/2001 has established regulations within the legal framework governing the operation of gambling activities in casinos,” said Choi Sao Leng, Chief of the bureau’s Licensing and Inspection Department.
“It stipulates that only specific companies are permitted to conduct promotional activities and provide information or engage in gambling-related activities within the gambling zones of casinos.
“To prevent the adverse effects of gambling advertisements on society, we will generally maintain the policy of prohibiting advertisements that imply gambling, except for promotional activities conducted within the gambling areas of casinos.”
Although gambling is strictly illegal in mainland China, it remains a highly popular pastime.
Overall, players from Greater China are estimated to account for more than half of the world’s illegal gambling economy.
Off-shore online betting sites are estimated to generate around one trillion Yuan (£111.8bn/US$139bn) per year from mainland Chinese residents.
Triads
And according to a recent (2024) report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime–’Casinos, Money Laundering, Underground Banking, and Transnational Organized Crime in East and Southeast Asia: A Hidden and Accelerating Threat’–billions of dollars are being laundered every year through illegal online betting sites, often owned by Chinese interests with direct links to organised crime, the notorious Triads.
Operating out of countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines, where regulations surrounding gambling licenses are comparatively lax or poorly enforced, Internet betting sites are targeting and defrauding millions of Chinese and global citizens, while many supposed iCasinos serve as fronts for drug trafficking, people smuggling, and cyber fraud.
The regulatory squeeze on Macau comes amid heightened interest and plans to expand the casino-resorts business throughout Southeast and East Asia, albeit struggling in Thailand but moving forward at fast pace in Vietnam, The Philippines and Japan.
Asia’s gambling’s fulcrum is tilting, inexorably, from Macau to newer, fresher, markets.
Watch this space!
