The Largest Casinos In The World

The phrase largest casino in the world sounds like it should have one clean answer. It does not. Casinos measure themselves the way anglers measure fish, and a building's square footage might mean the gaming floor, or the gaming floor plus the malls and ballrooms and parking garages, depending on who is doing the bragging. So treat the numbers below as honest estimates rather than laser measurements. With that disclaimer out of the way, here are the biggest casinos on the planet, ranked from the heavyweight champion on down. The first surprise: the title does not belong to Las Vegas, or even to Macau, which still claims six of the twelve spots, but to a small town in Oklahoma.

1. WinStar World Casino, Oklahoma, USA (about 600,000 square feet)

The biggest casino on Earth sits in Thackerville, a town of roughly 400 people an hour north of Dallas, which tells you everything about why it is there: Texas bans casino gambling, so Texans drive up the highway to this one. WinStar, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, spreads across something like 600,000 square feet, although the figure is slippery because the casino has been quietly converting gaming floor into restaurants, hotels, and event space. Its gimmick is the layout, with gaming plazas themed after world cities, so you can lose your money in Paris, Rome, and Beijing without ever leaving Oklahoma. At its peak it packed in more than 10,000 electronic games, roughly double its nearest rival.

2. The Venetian Macao, Macau, China (about 546,000 square feet)

If WinStar is the surprise champion, the Venetian Macao is the one that looks the part. Its roughly 546,000 square feet form the largest single continuous casino floor anywhere, a hall so vast it can hold close to 10,000 players at once, with around 6,000 slot machines and the most table games in the world. Opened in 2007 as a supersized cousin of the Las Vegas original, it comes with indoor canals, gondolas, singing gondoliers, and a painted sky over the shopping mall, because subtlety was never the point. Macau, a former Portuguese colony and the only place in China where casino gambling is legal, has quietly out-earned the Las Vegas Strip for years.

3. City of Dreams, Macau, China (about 420,000 square feet)

Across the street from the Venetian, City of Dreams is Macau going sleek and futuristic instead of Old World kitsch. Its roughly 420,000 square feet of gaming sit inside a complex run by Melco, anchored by the Morpheus, a hotel tower wrapped in a looping steel exoskeleton designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid. For years its signature draw was the House of Dancing Water, a stage show performed in and around a pool holding millions of gallons. The casino leans hard on baccarat, the game that drives the entire Macau market, where a single high-roller salon can move more money in a night than a regional casino sees in a month.

4. Mohegan Sun, Connecticut, USA (about 364,000 square feet)

Here is the entry the older rankings keep forgetting. Mohegan Sun, in Uncasville, Connecticut, runs about 364,000 square feet of gaming across its Casino of the Sky and Casino of the Earth, which makes it bigger than its more famous neighbor down the road and the second-largest casino in the entire United States. Owned by the Mohegan Tribe, it pairs roughly 5,000 slot machines and 300-odd tables with a 10,000-seat arena that hosts concerts and the WNBA's Connecticut Sun, plus an indoor waterfall, because why not. The fact that it routinely gets left off these lists says less about its size than about who remembers to update them.

5. Foxwoods, Connecticut, USA (about 344,000 square feet)

A 15-minute drive from Mohegan Sun sits Foxwoods, which was once, before Macau and WinStar existed, the largest casino on the planet. Owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, it still covers roughly 344,000 square feet across several connected casinos linked by moving walkways, with thousands of slots and a bingo hall that seats more than 3,000 people, one of the biggest anywhere. Connecticut, the third-smallest state in the country, somehow ended up with the two largest casinos in the United States sitting almost next door to each other, which is the kind of thing that happens when tribal gaming arrives before the neighbors can think to object.

6. Wynn Macau, Macau, China (about 294,000 square feet)

Wynn Macau is the casino you have probably seen in photographs of the city without knowing its name, its curved gold tower one of the defining shapes on the peninsula skyline. Behind the glass sits roughly 294,000 square feet of gaming, weighted heavily toward the private high-limit salons where Macau actually makes its money. Out front, a choreographed fountain show and a rotating tree-and-dragon spectacle keep the crowds entertained between bets. It is the older, peninsula-side sibling of the even glossier Wynn Palace out on the Cotai strip, proof that in Macau there is always a bigger, shinier version going up next door.

7. Ponte 16, Macau, China (about 270,000 square feet)

Ponte 16 is the rare Macau casino built into the old town rather than the glittering Cotai reclamation, planted in the UNESCO-listed historic center on the Inner Harbour, a short walk from centuries-old temples and Portuguese colonial squares. The complex lists around 270,000 square feet, though only a portion of that is actual gaming floor, with a few hundred slots and tables rather than the thousands its rivals pack in. It trades raw scale for location and a Sofitel hotel, and it leans into the contrast between Macau's casino-age present and its very old past.

8. Rio Casino Resort, Klerksdorp, South Africa (about 266,000 square feet)

Now for the entry that gives the whole measurement game away. The Rio Casino Resort in Klerksdorp, South Africa, is regularly billed as the largest casino in Africa at 266,330 square feet, a figure repeated so often it has hardened into fact. Then you look at what is actually on the floor: about 274 slot machines and roughly a dozen tables. WinStar has 10,000 machines. So the Rio's headline number is plainly measuring the entire neon, Carnival-themed complex, not a wall-to-wall sea of slots. It is a genuinely fun resort done up like Rio de Janeiro at Carnival, and it really is the biggest in its region. It is also a standing reminder to read the footnotes on any size ranking, this one included.

9. Sands Macao, Macau, China (about 229,000 square feet)

Sands Macao matters less for its size than for what it kicked off. When it opened in 2004 as the first Las Vegas-style casino in Macau, it reportedly earned back its entire construction cost within a year, a payback so fast it set off the building boom that turned Macau into the gambling capital of the world. Every larger Macau name on this list exists partly because Sands Macao proved the money was there to be made. At around 229,000 square feet, it is now one of the smaller giants in town, comfortably out-glittered by the megaresorts it inspired.

10. MGM Grand Macao, Macau, China (about 222,000 square feet)

The MGM Macau, on the peninsula waterfront, packs roughly 222,000 square feet of gaming behind a wavy, color-blocked glass facade you could not miss if you tried. Inside, a soaring glass-roofed atrium called the Grande Praca is modeled on a Lisbon town square, a nod to Macau's Portuguese centuries. It is the smaller, older Macau outpost of the MGM brand, long since overtaken in size by the company's enormous MGM Cotai across the water. By the standards of the top of this list it is compact, which in Macau still means thousands of ways to part with your cash.

11. MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (about 170,000 square feet)

The most famous name on this list is, by these standards, almost modest. The MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip offers around 170,000 square feet of gaming, a fraction of the Macau and tribal giants above it, which is the quiet story of the modern casino: Las Vegas no longer builds the biggest rooms. What the MGM Grand has instead is one of the largest hotels on Earth, with roughly 5,000 rooms, and an arena that has hosted many of the biggest boxing matches in history. When it opened in 1993 it even came with a full theme park out back, an experiment Nevada quietly abandoned by 2000.

12. Borgata, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA (about 161,000 square feet)

Rounding out the list is the Borgata, whose name means little village in Italian and whose roughly 161,000 square feet make it the biggest casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, if not remotely the biggest in the world. It opened in 2003 and dragged Atlantic City's casino scene upmarket, with a poker room tied to the World Poker Tour and around 2,000 hotel rooms. It is the smallest entry here, which is worth sitting with for a moment: the least of the world's largest casinos still holds more gaming space than most people will see in a lifetime of weekend trips.

The Full Ranking at a Glance

One table, all twelve, with the usual reminder that the square footage is approximate and the order gets fuzzier toward the bottom.

So Which One Is Really the Biggest?

It depends entirely on how you hold the tape measure. By total gaming floor and sheer number of machines, WinStar wins, which is why it wears the crown most often. By the size of a single unbroken casino hall, the Venetian Macao has no equal. By the honest reading of square footage that actually has gambling on it, the order would shuffle again. The one thing every casino on this list agrees on is the part they would rather you not dwell on: these rooms are engineered, down to the carpet and the lack of clocks, to keep you inside and playing. The size is the spectacle. The math always favors the house.