MACAU - Thousands of gamblers on Sunday jammed into a new casino owned by a local billionaire who is trying to fend off an invasion by Las Vegas tycoons who have been gobbling up market share in the booming Chinese territory of Macau.
Many of the punters who crowded into the Grand Lisboa - shaped like a huge lotus flower covered in blinking lights - were big-betting mainland Chinese who helped push Macau past the Las Vegas Strip last year as the world's gaming center.
The five-floor casino is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho, who held a monopoly on gaming in Macau for four decades until 2002. The former Portuguese enclave - two islands and a peninsula off China's southeastern coast - is the only place in China where casinos are legal.
In the past four years, some of the biggest names from Las Vegas - Las Vegas Sands Corp.'s Sheldon Adelson, Wynn Resorts Ltd.'s Stephen Wynn and MGM Mirage Inc.
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