Gambling in Macau has been legal since the 1850s when the Portuguese government legalised the activity in the autonomous colony. Since then,

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

has become known worldwide as the "Gambling capital of the world" or "

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino i ...

of the East". Gambling tourism is Macau's biggest source of revenue, making up about 50% of the

economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with t ...

. Visitors are largely from

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater Chin ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

. With the entry of large foreign

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live enterta ...

s from

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the List of United States cities by population, 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the U.S. state, state of Neva ...

and Australia, Macau overtook the

Las Vegas Strip The Las Vegas Strip is a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard South in Clark County, Nevada, that is known for its concentration of resort hotels and casinos. The Strip, as it is known, is about long, and is immediately south of the Las Vegas cit ...

in gambling revenues in 2007. Until Western-style

casino games Games available in most casinos are commonly called casino games. In a casino game, the players gamble cash or casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes. Casino games are also available in online casinos, wher ...

were introduced in the 20th century, only Chinese games were played, the most popular being

Fan-Tan Fan-Tan, or fantan () is a gambling game long played in China. It is a game of pure chance which has similarities to roulette. The game is played by placing two handfuls of small objects on a board and guessing the remaining count when divided by ...

. Generally, gambling in Macau can be divided into one of four categories:

greyhound racing Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing; the latter is now banned in most countries. Tra ...

sports betting Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basket ...

, and lotteries. At the present time, Macau does not license

online gambling Online gambling is any kind of gambling conducted on the internet. This includes virtual poker, casinos and sports betting. The first online gambling venue opened to the general public was ticketing for the Liechtenstein International Lottery i ...

operations. Macau, a special administrative region like

, is the only place in China where casinos are legal, and the business has grown at an astounding pace since 2001, when the government ended the four-decade gambling monopoly of the Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho. Macau is the pre-eminent gambling capital of the world, grossing the highest amount of gambling/gaming revenue and greatly dwarfing all the other gambling centers/cities.

History

In an attempt to generate revenues for the government, gambling in Macau was legalized by the Portuguese government in 1849. In the late 19th century, the government introduced a licensing system for the ''fantan'' houses (Chinese gambling houses). It is reported that over 200 gambling houses were required to pay gambling rent to the government. The second casino monopoly concession was granted to the Tai Heng Company in 1937. The company was, however, too conservative to fully exploit the economic potential of gambling. The industry saw a major breakthrough in 1962 when the government granted the monopoly rights to all forms of gambling to '' Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau'' (STDM), a syndicate jointly formed by Hong Kong and Macanese businessmen. The STDM introduced Western-style games and modernised the marine transport between Macau and Hong Kong, bringing millions of gamblers from Hong Kong every year. The license was extended in 1986 for another 15 years but expired at the end of 2001. Macau was transferred to the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, sli ...

in 1999 and became a special administrative region of China. During this transition, there were no changes to gambling policy in Macau. In 2002, the Macau government ended the monopoly system and granted three (later six) casino operating concessions (and subconcessions) to: Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM, an 80% owned subsidiary of STDM),

Wynn Resorts Wynn or wyn (; also spelled wen, ƿynn, and ƿen) is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound . History The letter "W" While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph ...

Las Vegas Sands Las Vegas Sands Corporation is an American casino and resort company with corporate headquarters in Paradise, Nevada, United States. Its corporate mission is to create "Integrated Resorts" which feature a combination of gambling, accommodation ...

, Galaxy Entertainment Group, the partnership of MGM Mirage and Pansy Ho Chiu-king, and the partnership of Melco and PBL. On 18 May 2004, the Sands Macau casino opened near the Macau Ferry Terminal. Today, there are 16 casinos operated by the STDM, and they are still crucial in the casino industry in Macau.

Economic aspects

Macau's economy relies heavily on gambling. Nowadays, the gambling industry generates over 40% of the GDP of Macau. Since the early 1960s, around 50% of Macau's official revenue has been driven by gambling. The percentage remained steady until the late 1990s. In 1998, 44.5% of total government revenue was produced by the direct tax on gambling. Then there was a 9.1% decrease in 1999, probably due to internet gaming. After the handover of Macau from Portugal to China, the SAR released gambling licenses to other companies to eliminate the monopoly played by the STDM. In 2002, the government signed concession contracts with two Macau gaming companies, Wynn Resort Ltd. and Galaxy Casino. This opened the gambling market for competition and increased government tax revenue significantly. It also attracted more tourists to Macau. At this moment, according to official statistics, gambling taxes form 70% of Macau's government income.Bloomberg, Macau Casinos Top Las Vegas as Adelson, Wynn, Battle Stanley Ho, 1 March 2007 However, the gambling industry is also a source of instability in the Macau economy, as the nature of the gambling business is not susceptible to technological advancement or productivity growth. The gambling business is still dependent on the prosperity of other Asian economies, especially that of China. Due to

Xi Jinping Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, ...

's promise on cracking down of corruption across mainland China, casino profits from across Macau have been reporting a decline in monthly profits In addition, a proliferation of other gambling venues in the region is drawing the target demographic away. Macau's 2018 grew 13% over the prior year, but this lagged behind the 41% growth in emerging casino markets in Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia, according to Fitch Ratings. In 2019 casino earnings reached their lowest level in three years. In 2020 Macau had a decline of 56 percent in revenue, and the number of monthly visitors fell from approximately 3 million before the COVID-19 pandemic to fewer than 1 million in 2021. The unemployment rate increased from an average of 2 percent over the past decade to 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022.

Gambling forms

Casinos

Macau has 41 casinos (as of 2019), of which the biggest is The Venetian Macao. Twenty-four casinos are located on the

Macau Peninsula The Macau Peninsula is the most populous and historical part of Macau. It has an area of () and is geographically connected to Guangdong Province at the northeast through an isthmus wide. The peninsula, together with downtown Zhuhai, sits on ...

and 17 in Cotai. They all operate under a government franchise and under a common set of rules. The main casino operators in Macau are SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment and

with respective revenues of 9.7, 4.8, and 4.2 billion in 2011. A wide range of games are available, including

roulette Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning ''little wheel'' which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi''.'' In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the ...

, blackjack,

baccarat Baccarat or baccara (; ) is a card game played at casinos. It is a comparing card game played between two hands, the "player" and the "banker". Each baccarat coup (round of play) has three possible outcomes: "player" (player has the higher score ...

, boule, Sic bo,

Fan Tan Fan-Tan, or fantan () is a gambling game long played in China. It is a game of pure chance which has similarities to roulette. The game is played by placing two handfuls of small objects on a board and guessing the remaining count when divided by ...

, keno and

slot machine A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine ( Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively ...

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

was introduced only in August 2007, in an electronic table format at Galaxy Starworld casino. The first live poker tournament was the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau event in November 2007. Shortly thereafter, in January 2008, the government of Macau published the official rules for

Texas hold 'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt fa ...

poker games in Macau. In February 2008, Grand Lisboa Casino added the first live-dealer cash game tables. In May 2008, '

PokerStars PokerStars is an online poker cardroom that was a part of The Stars Group until it was sold to Flutter Entertainment on May 5, 2020. It can be accessed through downloadable poker clients for the Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It is the ...

Macau' opened at Grand Waldo Casino. In November 2008,

Texas Holdem Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt fac ...

' Poker opened at Wynn Macau. '

Macau' moved to a new location at the Grand Lisboa Casino in March 2009. Today, Wynn Macau, StarWorld, and the Venetian offer live-dealer cash game poker tables. Previously, most casinos were non-smoking. This caused serious discontent from both operators and visitors. In 2019, the Chinese Ministry of Health allowed smoking in special rooms in most casinos. In February 2020, in connection with the spread of coronavirus, after a two-week break in the casino, a restriction was introduced.

Location of the Race-course and the Canidrome

Horse racing

Other than casinos, there is betting at the Macau Jockey Club and the dog-racing Canidrome. Horse-racing mainly takes place every Tuesday and Saturday or Sunday at the race-course on the Taipa Island of Macau. The race-course has an area of 450,000 square metres and 18,000 seats for gamblers, and is open only for people over 18 years of age. The Macau Jockey Club was formerly the Macau Trotting Club. In 1991, it was acquired by a consortium led by Stanley Ho. The Macau Jockey Club is one of the largest private employers of Macau with around 1,400 employees and around 1,100 part-timers. ;Ways of betting *On-course betting There are over 210 betting terminals "on-course". All terminals can perform sell and pay functions. Punters may bet in Hong Kong dollars or Macau patacas. Bets are accepted up to the start of each race. Punters may place a bet by oral instructions or by filling a ticket. *Off-course betting There are over 80 betting terminals in the Off-Course Betting Centres. 14 Off-course Betting Centres are located in popular districts of Macau and Taipa. *Internet betting The Internet betting service commenced on 20 September 2003. Customers can review the Club's internet betting website at www.macauhorsebet.com. *Telephone services There are over 600 telephone service terminals and a total of over 38,000 telebet accounts. The winning dividend of account holders may at their instructions be automatically transferred to their bank accounts. *Fast Access Terminals (FAT) Launched in June 1997, the personal betting terminal, FAT (Fast Access Terminal) offers betting, calculation of bet units, record tracking of bets, account enquiry, withdrawal instructions and other related information on races such as declaration and race-odds. Close to 1,000 customers are currently using FAT. *Hong Kong Service Centres Three service centres are now set up in Hong Kong including Shaukeiwan Service Centre, Sheung Wan Service Centre and Mongkok Service Centre.

Greyhound racing

Greyhound racing Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing; the latter is now banned in most countries. Tra ...

is permanently banned in Macau. The Canidrome closed on 21 July 2018. After negotiations with the track's owner and intense fundraising by an international group of volunteer-run, greyhound adoption organizations led by Anima, 517 greyhounds received veterinary medical care and were shuttled out to be adopted in Europe, North America, Australia, and, for a few, locally in Macau.

Gaming law

No one under the age of 21 is allowed to gamble. Detailed law is enforced in Macau to ensure "qualified operation of gambling" in Macau. The details are listed in Law 16/2001 (regime jurídico da exploração de jogos de fortuna ou azar em casino), and other laws regulating the activity of gaming promoters and credit for gaming. The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (known as DICJ) is the main government unit that oversees the operation of different gaming activities. Under Macau law, it stated that a permit issued by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau is required for the operation of lotteries sales, lucky draw or similar activities, and the initial procedure in the application on the operation of lotteries sales, lucky draw, or similar activities is to submit a notification to the relevant government department ten days prior to the application. In the Macau legal system, gaming law is not considered as a branch of law in the traditional sense. Instead, it may be considered as a transversal gathering of a range of legal topics more or less directly related to gaming, including

constitutional law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as the basic rights of citizens and, in fed ...

administrative law Administrative law is the division of law that governs the activities of executive branch agencies of government. Administrative law concerns executive branch rule making (executive branch rules are generally referred to as " regulations"), ...

tax law Tax law or revenue law is an area of legal study in which public or sanctioned authorities, such as federal, state and municipal governments (as in the case of the US) use a body of rules and procedures (laws) to assess and collect taxes in a ...

, company law,

contract A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to ...

law, and criminal law. In this manner, issues of public law as well as private law are of relevance for gaming.

Tax law issues

The taxation of casino sub/concessionaires is made of a fixed part and a variable part. The variable part falls on the gross gaming revenue. The tax rate is currently of 35%, plus two contributions of up to 2% and 3% for social and economic purposes. The maximum tax is therefore 40%. In addition, a fixed premium is also payable, plus a premium per VIP table, other table, and slot machine. Gaming promoters pay taxes on commissions received.

Contract law issues

From the perspective of contract law, gaming and betting are contracts which may or may not generate civil or natural obligations for the parties. The matter is regulated in the Civil Code 1999 (art. 1171), which states, drawing from

Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Jus ...

, that gaming and betting generate natural obligations except in sports competitions and where the law provides otherwise. The problem is that gaming legislation currently does not provide to this effect. Regarding credit for gaming, Macau law states since 2004 that the granting of credit for casino games of fortune generates civil obligations, which are fully enforceable in Macau courts. Credit for casino games of fortune is defined as any case where chips are passed on to a player without immediate cash payment of such chips; this is an intentionally broad concept. Credit for gaming is regulated by Law no. 5/2004, of 14 June.

Criminal law issues

From the perspective of criminal law, there are specific criminal offences related to gaming; see Law 8/96/M, of 22 July, and Law 9/96/M, of 22 July. Other criminal law matters are covered by broader laws: the Penal Code and the law on

Organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally tho ...

. Game cheating is mentioned in art. 6 of Law 8/96/M, of 22 July. In addition, general laws on the prevention and repression of

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdiction ...

and the financing of

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

through casinos apply.

Problem gambling

As of November 2011, exclusion of players from gambling establishments is voluntary. If the person realises that their gambling activities begin to cause trouble, they can turn to the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau to ban them from entering the casino. The government of Macau is seeking the opinions of the citizens on the possibility of establishing a programme that will allow excluding problem gamblers from all casinos without their consent. The Legislative Assembly is currently analyzing the new draft law, which also deals with the problem of exclusion from gambling houses. The law suggests that the person can be excluded from the casino if they submit their own request or approve the request submitted by their relatives.Macau Daily Times: Gov't considers ban on problem gamblers
/ref>

Other matters

Competition law matters, and advertising law, as well as the impact of WTO law on gaming, may also be pointed out as part of gaming law. Regarding online gaming, the Macau SAR does not currently grant concessions for online casinos. The current casino concessions only cover land-based gaming, not online gaming.

Academic research and teaching

The teaching of Macau gaming law started in 2005 the Faculty of Business Administration of the

University of Macau The University of Macau (UM; Portuguese: ''Universidade de Macau'', Chinese: 澳門大學) is an internationalised public comprehensive university in Macau. The UM campus is located in the east of Hengqin Island, Guangdong province in Mainland ...

, in the undergraduate program of gaming management. Since 2007 it is also included in the master program of international business law offered by the Faculty of Law of the University of Maca

in which various theses have already been defended in topics of gaming law.

References

External links

* {{Gambling by country Gambling in Macau,