But Macau\u2019s bread and butter had always been Chinese VIP high rollers. With a fondness for high stakes baccarat, these whales’ trips were facilitated by Macau\u2019s multibillion-dollar junket industry. In fact, the junkets accounted for some 60 percent of Macau\u2019s revenues during the boom years.<\/p>\n
Junket operators would act as middlemen, organizing trips and lending their clients large sums of cash in order to curb restrictions on the amount of money that could be brought from the mainland. VIPs would then settle their debts on their return to China.<\/p>\n
Many of these VIPs were, in fact, corrupt Communist Party officials whose fortunes were derived from kickbacks or embezzlement of public money. Corruption had reached epidemic proportions in China, and Beijing had had enough, vowing to track fraudulent officials \u201cto the ends of the earth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fearing reprisals from Beijing, the VIPs began to steer clear of Macau, heading to Manilla in the Philippines, or to Vietnam\u2019s Ho Tram Strip to get their kicks instead.<\/p>\n
Unprecedented Crackdown<\/h2>\n
The anti-corruption drive was squeezing Macau throughout the latter half of 2014. As well as scaring off the high rollers, Beijing had imposed restrictions on the use of UnionPay, China\u2019s only domestic bank card, which further stemmed the flow of middle-class money from the mainland.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the introduction of a blanket smoking ban inside casinos failed to improve matters.<\/p>\n
But by early 2015, China had ramped it up a notch, initiating an \u201cunprecedented crackdown\u201d on the junket industry, tightening regulatory controls and demanding more transparency from the junkets about their clients and the criminal history of their employees. By September, the junket industry was \u201cbroken,\u201d according to Rob Goldstein, LVS president.<\/p>\n
New casino resorts, conceived during the boom time, still opened their doors this year, such as James Packer\u2019s Studio City Macau, while Steve Wynn\u2019s Wynn Palace Macau due to open in the middle of next.<\/p>\n
Despite the general malaise and stingy table games allocations for new casinos from the Macau regulator which is bowing to pressure from Beijing, Packer said he remained upbeat about the region\u2019s long-term future, while conceding that Macau\u2019s downturn has been \u201cworse than anyone expected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The fortunes of Macau were already tumbling as 2015 began. The downturn actually started back in June 2014, when the gambling hub recorded the first-ever monthly dip in revenues since Stanley Ho\u2019s casino monopoly ended in 2012, a move that had effectively opened the Asian gambling region up to foreign investment. However, no one could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":32549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Fall of Macau: What Happened to the Gambling Fireball in 2015?<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n