Asian billionaire Stanley Ho (何鴻燊) is scheduled to open a new casino in Macau today in an effort to strike back at US gaming moguls who invaded the Chinese territory after Ho's four-decade monopoly was broken up four years ago.
Ho's new HK$3 billion (US$384 million) Grand Lisboa Hotel -- a gold tower with 430 rooms and a top that looks like a giant lotus flower -- may also help Macau hold its new title as the world's casino capital.
Macau apparently edged out the Las Vegas Strip in revenue last year, raking in US$6.95 billion. The Las Vegas Strip's US$6.69 billion was a record, but not enough to stay ahead of Macau -- the only place in China with legalized casino gambling.
The 85-year-old Ho is ranked 84th on Forbes' list of the 100 richest people in the world. He controlled all the casinos in Macau until his monopoly ended in 2002 and Las Vegas casino titans Wynn Resorts Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp began building gleaming casinos and resort complexes.
The brash US casinos have lured away many of Ho's customers with flashy gaming halls, snappy service, fine cuisine, designer boutiques and other Las Vegas touches.
A JP Morgan forecast said Ho's share of the market will dwindle until it holds just one-fourth by 2009.
Ho, who has 17 casinos, has complained that the Americans have been poaching his staff and stealing away customers from his VIP halls -- special rooms for high rollers who are the biggest source of revenue for Macau casinos.
Some of the sniping and trash talking erupted in public a few months ago in Macau, a peninsula and two islands on China's southeastern coast.
William Weidner, president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp, told reporters that Ho was being a crybaby and warned him that in the next few years, Macau's market would become even more "brutally competitive."
"We live everyday on the Las Vegas strip, where you can look out your window and see your competitor across the street and there aren't three competitors," Weidner said. "There are 30 competitors."
Sands executives also told Ho to stay out of the kitchen if he couldn't take the heat. Ho shot back: "Not only won't I stay out of the kitchen, but I will also cook a barbecue pork rice set."
Sunday's casino opening might be a good sign of whether Ho's cooking is still good enough.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd (
The company expects its newly opened flagship, the StarWorld casino hotel, to be the main revenue earner among its five casinos in Macau, which appears to have dethroned the Las Vegas Strip as the world's gambling capital.
"We held 22 percent share of Macau's gaming market by gaming revenue for January based on our own estimate," senior vice president John Au said on Friday.
He expected Galaxy Entertainment's market share to rise to 25 percent by year end.
The company's share rose rapidly from just 7 percent of the market in the first quarter of last year to 18 percent in the fourth quarter, Au said.
StarWorld, Galaxy's new flagship, has received one third of the total number of visitors to the city -- about 20,000 people a day -- since it opened in October, the company said.
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