This week’s casino news hones in on the two biggest gambling areas of the world: Las Vegas and Macau. Both have been bruised badly by the COVID-19 pandemic and there is still no end in sight to their pain.
Macau Revenue Continue To Tumble
It’s felt like China has been one of the countries that has been able to stem a second COVID-19 wave but it isn’t helping Macau. Unfortunately, the casino industry in Macau has still not been able to get itself back on track. The November numbers are in for Macau casinos and they have endured a drop of nearly 70 in terms of the year-over-year numbers. On the bright side, this was the most successful month that Macau was able to have since this whole pandemic first began.
They may not be fully recovering like they had hoped but there has been signs of life this month after consecutive 90 percent drops in the months prior to November.
There was a particularly bright spot in the November report as there was a major improvement with hotel occupancy rising. The tourism in the area beginning to kick up a small bit. That might indicate that customers are feeling comfortable to come back to Las Vegas of the East.
Las Vegas Strip Casino Closes Hotel Tower
Speaking of Las Vegas, it wasn’t a great day for the Las Vegas Sands Corp. The Sheldon Adelson-owned brand has announced the shutdown of the Palazzo Hotel, which is part of The Venetian casino-resort. The recent surge of positive COVID-19 cases has badly hurt the revenue of the hotel, so the company has decided to have that one go dark for the time being. They don’t have the occupancy rates, so they can at least close that portion of the property and save on the cost of running it.
The Venetian will still be accepting Suite reservations. They are another Sands Corp. owned property, and they are choosing to stay open a little while longer. The decline of tourism has badly beaten up the entire Las Vegas Strip with a number of properties closing midweek.
Luckily, all of the casino portions of these properties are remaining open despite closing the hotels. Outside of The Venetian and the Palazzo, Wynn Resorts’ Encore stopped midweek operations for both their casino and hotel while Mandalay Bay, Park MGM and the Mirage have all followed the same strategy.
Connecticut Lawmaker Claims Sports Betting Coming In 2021
Good news for sports bettors in Connecticut. It appears that the popular pastime will be legal in the state in 2021. Earlier this week, a lawmaker stated that sports betting will be arriving in the state sometime in 2021. Rep. Sean Scanlon stated that it will be legalized in the coming year, which comes on the heels of Foxwoods partnering up with DraftKings.
If the Connecticut sports betting bill gets passed in the near future, it will make Connecticut the third state to legalize sports betting in New England region. New Hampshire was the most recent, launching in 2019 while Rhode Island was legalized back in the year 2018.