Daily News Channel
From the towering, pineapple-shaped Grand Lisboa to the vast campus of the Venetian, there’s no shortage of casinos to choose from in Macau. The only place in China where casinos are legal, Macau opened up its gambling industry in 2004, spurring the number of casinos to jump from 11 to 32.
For most of the past five years, the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau seemed a sure bet. After the local government ended a decades-old gaming monopoly in 2002, some of the biggest casino and hotel operators in the world rushed in with new projects, eager to tap into the hoards of wealthy Chinese who increasingly flocked to the “Asian Las Vegas.” The first American company to enter the market was Las Vegas Sands, which opened the Sands Macau casino in 2004 — and earned back its $285 million investment in only a year. U.S