We posted a few weeks ago about how the casinos of Las Vegas (and Nevada in general), posted their highest revenue ever in 2006.
Hapless tourists bet a record $170 billion dollars in Nevada casinos over the course of the year and the Las Vegas Strip walked away with the lion’s share, holding on to $6.7 billion of winnings.
While this is certainly impressive, the bigger news is that this new Vegas record was actually beaten in 2006 by the Chinese territory of Macao. The Chinese are legendary gamblers and Macao is rapidly becoming the Las Vegas of the East. Their record take in 2006?
$7 billion.
Wow. That’s more than the GDP of Chad and slightly less than that of the Republic of Congo. I’ll bet the Good Fellas in Vegas aren’t very happy about that.