Understand any stock in simple English
Enter a ticker to learn what the company does and how it makes money.
Studio City owns and runs a large casino and entertainment resort in Macau, making money mainly from gambling, hotels, and shows.
Studio City is a casino resort company. It owns and operates a big movie-themed entertainment complex in Macau, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, and it makes most of its money from people coming to play table games and slot machines there.
The resort, called Studio City Macau, sits on the Cotai Strip, the booming strip of casinos that Macau built on reclaimed land to mirror the Las Vegas Strip. It opened in 2015 with a cinematic theme — rides, a figure-eight Ferris wheel, and a faux Hollywood look — meant to pull in both gamblers and tourists, especially families from mainland China. The property has a large casino, a hotel tower with over a thousand rooms, a cinema, retail shops, and restaurants. The company earns money by winning more from gamblers than it pays out, and by selling hotel rooms, food, and entertainment to visitors. Studio City is not a standalone operator. It is controlled by Melco Resorts & Entertainment Melco Resorts & Entertainment, the Macau casino company run by billionaire Lawrence Ho, which owns most of Studio City's shares. The two companies are closely tied, and Melco has pumped money and management muscle into the resort. That backing matters because Macau casinos are expensive to build and run, and they live and die on government licenses. Studio City holds one of Macau's six casino concessions, the limited permits the government hands out to operators.
The business is volatile and capital-hungry. Macau's gambling revenue collapsed during the pandemic, and Studio City posted heavy losses as travel dried up. It has since recovered as tourists return, but it carries a lot of debt from building and expanding the resort, including a second hotel tower and more non-gaming attractions aimed at the Chinese government's push to make Macau less dependent on gambling. The big risk is concentration: one property, one city, and a customer base that depends on Chinese travel policy. The big prize is the same — Macau is the world's biggest gambling market, and a single good year there can mean enormous cash flow.
Saved answer · last researched 7 Nov 2026