World Gaming Magazine

12 WGM #61 2018/08 wgm8.com 封面故事 COVER STORY 位 于澳门路氹城的金光大道汇聚了九个国际级赌场 度假村，全年博彩总收入高达1,630亿澳门元（约 200亿美元）。路氹金光大道不仅是世界上最著名 的地标之一，亦是全球最富庶的地段之一。令人难以想象 的是，这个占地5.2平方公里的世界级博彩娱乐中心，十七 年前仅是一片荒芜湿地。 这是一个犹如盘古开天的故事，见证着从无到有的惊 人改变。凭藉一个人的前瞻，昔日静如止水的湿地，如今 已经发展成亮丽璀璨且享誉全球的博彩娱乐旗舰。 W ithnine casino resortswithin its reach and annual gaming revenue of around MOP$163 billion (US$20 billion), Macau’s Cotai Strip is not only one of the most famous stretches of land in the world but also among the richest. It’s remarkable to think that just 17 years ago this bustling 5.2 square kilometer entertainment hub was nothing more than empty swampland. The story of how an expanse of stagnant water was transformed into a global gaming goliath is as intriguing as a night spent indulging its gaming floors and began with one man’s implausible vision. The year was 2002 and US casino company Las Vegas Sands (LVS) – which was already building its first Asian casino, Sands Macao, on the Macau Peninsula – was in search of a location for a large-scale integrated resort unlike anything the tiny Chinese enclave could have imagined. But finding enough empty land for such an ambitious project was easier said than done. The solution, according togovernment representatives, was to be found in Cotai – an area of reclaimed land just south of the Peninsula originally planned for residential redevelopment. Those plans had since fallen through, so the government decided to offer it to LVS and its aspirational CEO Sheldon Adelson instead. Speaking about that moment at the 2016 launch of his fourth Macau resort, the Parisian, in 2016, Adelson recalled, “When they brought me out to see the land, I asked them, ‘Where is it?’ This place was all under water.” “This whole Coati strip was essentially water,” added LVS Managing Director George Tanasijevich in an interview with WGM ʼs sister publication Inside Asian Gaming last year. “We used to take people up to the top of a mountainside, investors and others, and look down from