The World Mahjong Tour, Inc has been trying to secure funding for their Tour to provide their players with tournaments. The WMT has secured Series A funding and will begin planning in 2008 for six high stakes mahjong tournaments. The tournaments will take place in major cities including Las Vegas, Macau and Los Angeles. The funding was made available by Leo Chu who owns the Hollywood Park Casino and Crystal Park Casino. Both casinos are located in Los Angeles, California. Chu has been involved in the North American gaming industry and wanted to help the WMT.

It is believed the Macau portion of the event will be very profitable. A Datamonitor showed that the Asia-Pacific market generated a revenue of $163 billion in casino and gaming industry in 2006 which equaled over 50 % of global revenues. Macau has gambling receipts that have increased by 22% in 2006 and is now ranked above Las Vegas as the global leader in economical status. Macau has had an increase in tourists too. In 2003 they had 10 million and in 2006 there were 22 million visitors. It has been estimated that by 2009 Macau will have around 45 million tourists visit their city.

The founders of the World Mahjong Tour are Pierre Wuu and David Wang. Wang used to be the Vice President of Online for the World Poker Tour and Wuu was the CEO/founder fo Click2Asia, an online dating company for the Asian community. Wang and Wuu have strong knowledge and contacts in the gaming marketplace. They hope to bring Mahjong into the mainstream and become a leader in the market. The World Mahjong Tour is open to charter casinos, partners and sponsors anyone interested can contact the group for more information. The tour next year will be filmed for television and will be seen globally. Specific dates and times for the tournament have not yet been released.

- 2007-11-23