Macau, the former Portuguese enclave on the south coast of China, has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip as the world’s biggest gambling market, fuelled by a boom in casino developments.

The 3,000-year-old obsession of the Chinese with gambling pushed revenues 22 per cent higher to $6.95 billion (£3.5 billion) in Macau last year, slightly ahead of the predicted turnover figure of $6.5 billion for the famous Strip in Las Vegas.

Ironically, the growth has partly been driven by the arrival of some of Las Vegas’s biggest operators. The Sands Macau, which opened in 2004, is one of the world’s largest casinos, while Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas legend, opened the $1.2 billion Wynn Macau in September.

Other super-casinos in the pipeline this year include The Venetian Macao and the MGM Grand Macau. The $1.8 billion Venetian development will anchor the enclave’s new Cotai Strip, which in the first phase of developmemt will have seven hotels with 19,000 rooms.

According to its Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau, Macau had a total of 24 casinos at the end of 2006, operating a total of 2,762 gaming tables and 6,546 slot machines. The current $20 billion development boom will sharply increase those figures over the next three years.

Experts are forecasting a further 18 per cent jump in gambling revenues this year helped by an expected 15 per cent increase in visitors from mainland China. The revenue figures include gambling on lotteries, dog racing and horseracing.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board has yet to release its full-year figures for the Las Vegas Strip, although in the first 11 months revenues came to $6.08 billion, suggesting it will do no better than $6.5 billion for the full 12 months.

Macau still lags behind the State of Nevada as a whole, which raked in $10.66 billion in 2005, although analysts believe that the furious pace of development could allow it to match such figures within the next few years.

Some experts believe that the pace of growth could be at risk from factors including labour shortages, an economic slowdown in China and, possibly, a fresh outbreak of bird flu or Sars could occur.

But the American invaders are not having things all their own way. Stanley Ho, the veteran casino chief who lost his Macau gaming monopoly in 2002, is about to reopen the Hotel Lisboa, which for 35 years has hosted Chinese gamblers playing baccarat, blackjack and sic bo — an Asian dice game — amid smoke-stained walls and frayed carpets.

The property will be relaunched as the Grand Lisboa Hotel and Casino after a $625 million investment. The property, which is shaped like a golden lotus petal, may not be as big as its new rivals but at 44 storeys tall it will tower over most of its American counterparts.

Chinese roots

The Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties banned gambling, on threat of caning, exile and even execution, but corruption led to triads operating gambling dens

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