Pandemic affecting Macau casinos
Macau is a city in China, which overtook Las Vegas in the number and popularity of casinos. Actually, Macau gets more than half of its revenues from the casinos. This comes as a result of the city hosting a variety of classy casinos, which have a variety of games both from traditional China and Western Europe types.
Besides, just the mere fact of the popularity of Macau Casino is enough to draw visitors from other parts of China, and the world at large. Nevertheless, the current pandemic must have affected the financial situation of the Macau Casinos, right? Stick with me to have the answer.
Development of the Financial Situation of Macau Casinos
The casino gaming industry in Macau had been booming, at least until recently, when China banned gambling. Though Macau was an exception, the larger Chinese population, which the industry depended on, went down.
Regardless of this unfortunate experience, the industry still continued making profits, and finally overtook Las Vegas.
Coronavirus and Financial Situation of Macau Casinos?
Like all the other sectors of the economy in the world, casinos have been primarily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Worse still is the fact that casinos are among the top entertainment and gambling sectors, which were among the first to close down.
Macau casinos were no different. They had to operate basically on zero revenues, which was worrying.
Firstly, this is as a result of government declaration, where local authorities banned visitors from mainland China and most parts of Europe. Hence, if visitors, who are the primary source of the boom of the business, will not come, then you can guess the decline that the casinos will experience.
Secondly, people had to cut costs on entertainment. The first retaliation that people had to the virus was to cut on cost. Social distancing further prompted people to stay away from public places, casinos being one of them.
Hence, even those that were not restricted from visiting the casinos stopped on their own, further decreasing the revenue prospects of the Macau casinos.
And lastly, tourism was halted indefinitely. The pandemic saw governments restricting travel all over. In any case, China was the last place people wanted to visit, being the root of the virus.
This further led to the decline of the clients the casinos would get.
Has the Decline in Income led to the Macau Casino Closing Down?
This is the most interesting part. By February 2020, Macau casinos were already feeling the impact of Covid-19. Today, they have made losses of more than 50%, due to zero income operations.
However, the casinos continue to operate. Given the previous over-the-moon profits, the industry is able to burn $3 million within a month on operations, and still remain standing.
Amazingly, they are still anticipating to run, even for a couple of years, as they await normality to return.
Read the world’s largest casino center’s situation: Las Vegas struggling during COVID-19
Final Verdict
The financial situation of Macau Casinos is not great, just like with all the other entertainment industries. However, it is impressive how they were able to bounce back, using revenues garnered over the years. This is contrary to most other casinos all over the world, even in Las Vegas.