Macau sports betting operator sees revenue fall
The city’s only sports betting operator has reported bad results for full-year 2016.
Macau.- Macau Slot Co Ltd, the only sports betting company in Macau, has reported that during 2016 the company experienced a 14.8 percent fall to US$14.7 million. The information was published in Macau’s Official Gazette.
The sports betting monopoly suffered a revenue fall even if it also reported a 3.9 percent rise in gross revenue, with an annual aggregate of US$85 million, up from the US$82 registered a year before. The two biggest categories among sports betting are football and basketball, which generated US$66 million and US$19 million respectively. During the Gaming Global Expo G2E Asia 2017, Sands China said that the company could seek cooperation from the current holder of the only license to offer sports betting services in Macau, since casino operators would want to offer those services to their clients.
Approximately US$1 billion was collected by the operator in bets during 2016, a small number when compared to the figures that casinos make every year, but it still could represent a growing business if the casinos operators get the chance to promote the activity. The Asian Racing Federation revealed that approximately US$72 billion is illegally bet every year in only one province of China, and that is still growing in other countries in the continent.
