At year’s end the big winner, except for the month of December, was Steve Wynn. In only three months, he managed to grab a 16 percent stake of the gaming market.

Wynn Resorts jumped from a market share of nine percent in September to 16 percent by the end of November, surpassing global results from all of Galaxy’s already operating casinos, including the recently inaugurated Star World. Galaxy, however, recovered well in December and took third place again.

The 19 percent scored by Galaxy at the end of December shows strong growth from this operator, since it only had a nine percent slice of the market at the beginning of the year. At that time, only three of the six concessionaires and sub-concessionaires were operating in Macau.

Galaxy’s new casinos and Steve Wynn’s resort further cut into SJM’s domination over the gaming business. The oldest gaming operator fell from a 70 percent market share to 49 percent in December, the lowest ever.

Still, SJM just recently opened one of the many projects that promise to put up a strong fight for market leadership, at least, until the Cotai projects are up and running.

With the opening of Babylon Casino at Fisherman’s Wharf and the upcoming opening of the Lisboa Grand, SJM wants to boost its figure. The last time it did so was during the first quarter of 2005, when only Sands Macao could compete with it.

Simultaneously, Sheldon Adelson is also eager to open the colossal Venetian Macau, as well as the many other Cotai hotels with gaming rooms. Throughout 2006, Sands was one of the most prominent venues, but its share fell one percent, from 21 to 20.

Record after record

Once again, the Macau government raked in record gaming tax revenues. More 19 billion patacas (US$2.375 billion) were deposited in the SAR’s accounts, a 2.5 billion pataca increase (US$312.5 million) over 2005. This amount also represents a 12 percent increase over the 17-billion pataca budget estimates for 2006 (the direct tax accounting year starts in December and closes in November).

The local government charges a 35 percent direct gambling tax and an extra 4 percent in indirect taxes. Besides the direct and indirect taxes, concessionaires also pay an annual fee of 150,000 patacas per normal table and 300,000 patacas per VIP table, plus 1,000 patacas per slot machine.

Taking into account the total numbers of 2,700 tables and 5,900 slot machines in all 24 casinos, that’s an additional 500 million patacas from the gambling business.

According to our numbers, the 2006 figures should reach 55 billion patacas (US$6.87 billion). This means that fiscal revenues will reach more than 20 billion patacas (over US$2.5 billion).

By the end of 2005, total gross revenues from gaming amounted to 45.8 billion patacas (US$5.7 billion). Gross revenues, and consequently fiscal revenues, nearly tripled since 2001, when gross revenues reached 19.541 billion patacas (US$2.4 billion).

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