Macau vs Las Vegas The Facts

Travelling across the world to visit the best gambling cities in the world is a dream for many people.

Most popular on that list is world famous Las Vegas but millions also travel to the much smaller city of Macau on the South East Coast of China also known as the “Vegas of the East.”

Although Macau is a much smaller city gambling revenue is three times higher than Vegas. The Gross Gaming Revenue of Las Vegas is $6.4 billion a year, with 34 per cent of that generated from casino games.

Although the online gambling industry is forever expanding people still enjoy the glitz and glamour of visiting casino cities.

Although Macau’s surface area is three times smaller than Las Vegas the population is almost the same.

The Gross Gaming Revenue of Las Vegas is $6.4 billion on average with 34 per cent generated from casino games. The rest is from hotel rooms and restaurants. While Macau has an average GGR of $28.4 billion with the city receiving $12 billion, twice as much as Las Vegas earnings in total.

And Macau’s profits keep growing with a rise of 23.7 per cent last year more than the projected growth of 15 to 20 per cent.

Demographics play a large role in the vast differences in profits. Two thirds of Macau’s visitors come from China.

As a growing economy, Chinese people have more disposable income to spend which they may not have been able to afford in the past which exponentially increases the visitor base from the 1.3 billion population of the country.

Las Vegas, in contrast, relies on customers from the Western United States and the rest are from foreign countries, mostly Western Europe. And the demographics differ because a large majority of visitors to Las Vegas are families and sightseers so they tend to be more cautious with gambling.

Las Vegas has a truly international flavour of visitors while Macau sees high stakes gamblers from across Asia enjoying the rush of one of the best gambling cities in the world.

Both seasoned gamblers and first timers would enjoy either gambling city as they boast some of the best casinos in the world. Las Vegas is renowned for some wild night life while Macau benefits from its historical ties to Europe making it a uniquely European enclave on the door step of mainland China.