Weekly Casino News: Macau Revenue Rises, Vegas Strip Grows & More

There’s lots of life in Las Vegas these days. From tourists returning to developers investing, we’ve got plenty to catch you up on with this week’s headlines.

Las Vegas Strip Continues To Grow With New Corridor

As Las Vegas starts to come back to life following COVID-19, it’s nice to see that they are expanding. The resort corridor on the Las Vegas Strip already has a number of projects planned but it appears that another one will be getting thrown on soon. A Las Vegas developer plans to add a ton of restaurants and retail shops to the two acres of land that they bought in the area. Those acres of land were purchased at CityCenter for about $80 million by Flag Luxury.

To pinpoint exactly where the expansion is slated to happen, the plot of land is right by The Shops at Crystals and just south of the Cosmopolitan. This is going to be a nice addition to the resort corridor as Resorts World Las Vegas is already planned to open on June 24^th. Resorts World is a $4.3 billion dollar project and is currently the move expensive project to ever take place on the Strip. Barely passing the $4.1 billion Cosmopolitan.

But that isn’t all that is happening on the Strip in the coming months. Former NBA basketball player Jackie Robinson and the current developer have made efforts to build a non-gaming hotel and entertainment complex. The place is supposed to be built on around 27 acres of vacant land in the hopes to attract an NBA team to the area. All in all, there’s plenty happening on The Strip.

Street signs in Macau—which direction will you go?

Macau Casinos Surpass $1 Billion Mark In April

April ended up being a fantastic month for Macau casinos as they were able to claim $1.05 billion in gaming revenue. This ended up being the highest monthly total for them ever since the pandemic first started back in 2020. This giant month has given Macau optimism for the future, though their GGR aggregate is still down around 64 percent compared to April of 2019.

Macau has also seen an increase in visitors lately. Macau Public Security Police mentioned that they expect around 40,000 people to enter every day as the Labor Day events carry on. During March, it was recorded that 754,541 people were able to make their way into Macau, averaging 24,340 per day.

Las Vegas Sands CEO Rob Goldstein backed up that optimism that Macau has. Saying “We continue to have a strong belief in the Macau recovery because the March numbers were very different from those in January and February.”

Goa Casinos Have Been Closed For The Weekend As India Struggles Over COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has not been kind to India as they’ve had a really tough time corralling it. Hospitals are short on oxygen and with the pandemic out of control, the government has requested that all casinos from the Goa district to be closed for now. The earliest that these casinos will be able to reopen is this week but many could stay closed if conditions don’t improve. Casinos weren’t the only properties closed though, as restaurants, hotels, and multiple entertainment sites were shuttered for the weekend.

Goa announced that they saw 2,110 new COVID cases from just Tuesday, with 31 patients dying. Moving onto Saturday, India set a global record with 400,000 cases of this virus. This has caused their hospitals to be completely overrun with ill patients which has resulted in a vaccine shortage as well.

They are now attempting to do everything in their power to slow down the spread of COVID-19, with all casinos in Manila being closed as well. Hopefully, these steps are able to give some much-needed recovery to India.