Come for the Games, stay for Macau

Nadia Shaw

Macau has spent years trying to persuade the world that it is more than a place to gamble. The World Cup may offer an unexpectedly good argument for why sports should be central to that reinvention.

Consider what happens when the world’s biggest sporting events arrive. Macau’s casinos have historically felt the distraction.

During the 2014 World Cup, June gaming revenue fell 3.7% from a year earlier, its first annual monthly decline in five years, with analysts pointing partly to gamblers shifting their attention — and betting budgets — toward football. The 2018 tournament also coincided with softer-than-expected growth.

This year, the effect has been harder to ignore. Macau’s gross gaming revenue fell 12.1% year on year to MOP18.5 billion in June and was down 18.1% from May, its lowest monthly tally since September. Industry analysts attributed at least some of that weakness to the World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The lesson isn’t that sports are bad for Macau. It is almost the opposite.

Sports already command the attention — and wallets — of precisely the affluent consumers Macau wants. The opportunity is to turn that attention into a reason to get on a plane.

That is why the NBA China Games matter beyond the basketball court.

By concentrating two preseason games and related events in Macau over an entire week, Sands China is selling something casino operators understand particularly well: scarcity, access and experience. Premium packages can combine basketball with hospitality, dining and entertainment, extending spending well beyond the ticket itself.

To the Times, Sands China CEO Grant Chum described the ability to host two consecutive games and turn them into a weeklong event as “unprecedented.” But perhaps the more important feature is that the NBA’s return is part of a multiyear partnership.

A one-off spectacle produces headlines. A recurring event produces something much more valuable: habit.

Fans know it will return. Airlines and travel agencies can market around it. Hotels can package it. Visitors can put Macau on next year’s calendar before this year’s trip is over.

Formula One has perfected this model. Singapore’s Grand Prix isn’t simply a race. It is a weekend of concerts, restaurants, parties, corporate hospitality and conspicuous consumption. Plenty of people who aren’t devoted motorsport fans still want to be there because being there is part of the attraction.

Macau should be aiming for precisely that effect.

The city already possesses much of what it needs: luxury hotels, arenas, restaurants, shopping, casino floors and a dense resort infrastructure designed to keep visitors entertained and spending. Its gaming operators are also committed to billions of patacas in nongaming investment under their current concessions. Sports can provide the connective tissue between those assets.

The challenge now is consistency. Basketball one month, tennis another, with concerts, boxing, motorsport and other international events filling out the calendar. The objective shouldn’t simply be to fill hotel rooms on isolated weekends. It should be to create a lineup compelling enough that affluent travelers begin planning their Asian itineraries around Macau.

And that brings us back to the World Cup. Gaming demand may rebound once the tournament ends and attention shifts back toward the tables. Macau would naturally welcome it.

But simply waiting for gamblers to return is the old model.

The more ambitious bet is to ensure that the next time the global elite become obsessed with a sporting event, they don’t have to choose between the sport and Macau.

They come to Macau for both.