Macau Casinos Re-Open After Costly Typhoon Shutdown

The gambling is business is known for providing casino games to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In general, it takes an act of God or a force of nature to shut the doors of gambling establishments anywhere on the planet. That’s why last week’s 33-hour closure of the legendary casinos in Macau due to Typhoon Mangkhut was such an unusual, and expensive, event.
Chinese authorities ordered the casinos closed on Saturday night at around 11 p.m. local time as Mangkhut bore down on the island gambling enclave. The storm, one of the biggest that part of the world has seen in a long time, packed winds of up to 133 miles per hour and dumped massive amounts of rain wherever it went. That was enough to spur authorities into shutting down the island’s gambling establishments for the first time since gambling licenses were issued by the Chinese in 2002.
While a storm of Manghkhut’s magnitude is unusual, the shuttering of casinos is equally unusual and with good reason. When the casinos re-opened on Monday morning, it was estimated that the 33-hour closure cost as much as $136 million in lost revenue. That’s a huge number even by Macau standards and investors took notice right away. According to a report on Forbes.com, investors have already adjusted their revenue forecasts for the island gambling enclave by about three percent. Analysts also point out that it will probably take a couple more days before gambling activity in the island’s big casinos is back to normal.