Macau Struggles To Maintain Gaming Industry
LU STOUT: Welcomes back. Now China's gambling hub may be seeing a major decline in revenue, but that hasn't stopped the opening of a brand new $3.2 billion casino in Macau. Now the owners say the new project could be just what the industry needs to reinvent itself. Matt Rivers has more on Macau's Hollywood themed Studio City.</s>MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The rattle of the roulette wheel is not quite as loud as it once was here in Asia's very own sin city. High rollers who once spent big on the VIP tables just aren't filling the seats the way they used to. Gaming revenues think money from slot machines or baccarat tables are down 36 percent in 2015 and in a place like Macao, as so go the casinos, so goes the lcoal economy; it shrank more than 26 percent in just the last quarter alone. That's good enough to make it the worst performing economy in the world. A big reason for that, the ongoing anti-corruption campaign in Mainland China. President Xi Jinping has made a big push to curb lavish spending, money that's helped make gaming revenues in Macau today five times larger than Las Vegas. But the government wants the resorts to offer more.</s>LAWRENCE HO, CEO, MACAU CROWN ENTERTAINMENT: We have invested $3.2 billion U.S, 95 percent of the space is for non-gaming.</s>RIVERS: Lawrence Ho (ph) is the man behind the newest kid on the block Studio City Macau. It offers rides, shows, even a Ferries wheel. That's the way to tap into a growing Chinese middle class but admits there's no long-term future in Macau without gambling.</s>HO: The truth is gaming is really the financial engine. Without the gaming component, we wouldn't be able to build these fantastic properties.</s>RIVERS: But backing its pledge to diversify, the government has put strict limits on the number of tables each new casino can have. Casino magnate Steve Wynn slammed the policy on an earnings call earlier this month. "Preposterous," he fumed. "In my 45 years of experience I have never seen anything like this." His anger came as Wynn's Macau division reported a revenue decline of nearly 40 percent. Even as the economy here struggles mightily alongside the industry it relies on, the average worker hasn't really felt that crunch. The jobless rate remains below 2 percent and mass layoffs at casinos just haven't happened. And that means that at least for now casino owners are betting big on the future. Matt Rivers, CNN, Macau.</s>LU STOUT: And that is news stream. I'm Krsitie Lu Stout. But don't go anywhere. World Sport with Christina Macfarlane is next. END