Macau’s cash pile — the economic indicator Beijing can’t fudge

By Colby Cosh - Monday, August 13, 2012 at 11:17 AM - 0 Comments

Daniel J. Groshong/The New York Times

Westerners skeptical of official Chinese government statistics are always on the lookout for economic indicators that are hard for even a Communist to fudge. One of them is gambling revenue in Macau, the Chinese-controlled “special administrative region” and Asia’s casino capital. The city’s gaming industry opened to Western investors in 2002 and has experienced mind-bending growth ever since. Revenue increased 42 per cent in 2011 to US$33.5 billion, making the ex-colony five times the size of Las Vegas’s strip.

But Macau’s July figures showed a year-over-year growth of just 1.5 per cent. The Fitch credit rating agency noted that typhoons had affected the Hong Kong-Macau ferry service, but warned of new Asian competitors and possible straitened credit for Chinese junket operators, who extend credit to rich gamblers. The Western casino magnate most at risk from a sluggish Chinese economy is U.S. Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, whose Sands Macao has catapulted his wealth into the stratosphere. Adelson received an apology this week from U.S. Democrats’ Congressional Campaign Committee, who claimed he’d cultivated a “prostitution strategy” at his properties in Macau.

Polls: Showered with love and all bets are off

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 11:59 AM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Many in B.C. don’t buy the pitch that the Northern Gateway pipeline will create long-term jobs. A poll by research firm Mustel Group found 61 per cent think most jobs created by the pipeline, which would carry bitumen to the West Coast for shipment to Asia, would be short term, and that long-term employment opportunities would be lost because oil would be refined overseas.

Alberta: It used to be that Canadians saved their casual contempt for Toronto, that perceived bastion of snootiness and self-satisfaction. But according to a recent poll by Harris Decima, many residents of Vancouver and Toronto are just as scornful of Albertans. About a quarter thought people from Alberta are greedy and arrogant, while 40 per cent said people in the oil-rich province don’t care about the rest of Canada.

Ontario: Most people in Ontario don’t want to double down on casinos to help solve the cash-strapped province’s fiscal woes. A survey found that 69 per cent of Ontarians oppose the construction of new casinos in Toronto and Ottawa, even though, according to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, such venues would bring the province an additional $1 billion in revenue per year.

Quebec: When it comes to getting steamy in the shower, Quebecers are most keen. According to a new poll, 58 per cent of respondents from the province admit to having shower sex occasionally. Compare that with the Prairies, where 41 per cent of Albertans admit to the odd romp in the shower, and 46 per cent do from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Nova Scotia: People in Nova Scotia—along with residents of Newfoundland, P.E.I. and New Brunswick—are most likely to consult their pharmacists on health issues, according to a national survey by Nielsen PanelViews. In a region that has the fewest physicians per capita in the country, nearly half of respondents have spoken to pharmacists about “minor ailments.”

And it’s Rent-Seeking by a nose

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 3:33 AM - 0 Comments

(Nathan Denette/CP)

On Monday, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan gave the Economic Club a sneak preview of economist Don Drummond’s upcoming report on some ways in which the province might conceivably clamber back into surplus sometime within the 21st century. Duncan noted that the Ontario horseracing industry receives more than $300 million a year in money from the slot machines hosted at Ontario racetracks. “Wow, that’s a huge subsidy,” I hear you saying. Silly reader. No business ever admits to being subsidized! Continue…

It’s a hold’em-up

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Olaf Wagner/ Bild-Zeitung

With their ski masks and dark clothing, the four men who burst into a televised poker tournament in Berlin last week looked only slightly more sinister than the hooded, sunglassed guys at the card tables. But the audacious heist at the 5.4-million-euro (about $7.5 million) European Poker Tour event was no act of idle melodrama: the robbers stormed into the Grand Hyatt hotel wielding machetes and pistols, fighting off security guards and sending participants diving under tables. Then the men dashed into the streets of the German capital with an estimated 242,000 euros in cash. As of Tuesday, they were still at large.

The stunning spectacle, which unfolded before TV cameras and a live Internet audience, sent a chill through an industry that had up to this point lived a charmed life. Televised poker tournaments like the European tour are part of a rapidly globalizing gambling sector, whose companies stage the events mostly to promote their online gaming. With cameras practically everywhere in the room, Ocean’s Eleven-style robberies seemed unlikely, if not downright foolhardy.

No longer. Clips circulated on German news sites show the robbers were unfazed by the knowledge they were being filmed, gathering around a registration desk where the money was kept to fill several handbags with cash. The men then become embroiled in a melee with a burly, balding security guard, who throws what appears to be his cellphone at them. He can then be seen wrapping one of the bandits in a headlock, letting the man go only after another threatened to bash the guard with a stand-up lamp.

Continue…

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 5:41 PM - 28 Comments

Joe Comartin advocates for sports gambling.

Windsor-Tecumseh MP Joe Comartin last spring introduced a parliamentary motion to delete one paragraph from the Criminal Code which bans sports wagering — as was done a few years ago with dice games. ”We have been working with the Canadian Gaming Association and the CAW to get the government to move on this, but they haven’t, and we’re not sure why,” Comartin said. “It’s kind of frustrating.”

Comartin said Ontario casinos are facing a perfect storm, with increased competition and tighter passport rules and that sports wagering could provide a much-needed edge. ”We are worried,” Comartin said. ”At some point, we expect some state in the U.S. will follow Nevada’s example. Probably one of the states in the midwest will allow it. Then they will all come on board, to remain competitive.”