Macau Casino Revenue Balloons In MayNumbers Up 30% From Same Month 2023 |
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Macau continues to see a post-COVID rebound that saw May produce the island’s highest revenue since January 2020. The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reported this week that the island’s casino operators took in revenue of $2.5 billion in May, a 30% increase from the same month a year ago.
That number is also 9% higher than revenue from April. Year to date, gross gaming revenue has reached $11.2 billion, a 48% jump from all of 2023 but still 24% lower than pre-COVID 2019 numbers.
More Gamblers, Shift In Focus
The surge in revenue comes after mainland China has begun easing travel restrictions to the island. The country recently expanded the Macau visa program, allowing more gamblers to head to China’s only jurisdiction with legal casino gaming.
The increased revenue numbers also come at a time when the island’s gaming landscape has changed. China has limited the junkets that once brought wealthy businessmen from the mainland to gamble at the island’s casinos.
That has meant the Macau gaming industry has begun to focus more on smaller-stakes gamblers, rather than the “whales” that many properties catered to in the past. Reuters recently reported that this change has reaped benefits for some of the island’s smaller operators, including MGM China and Wynn Macau.
And while these new gamblers may not be whales, they still come with large incomes and are referred to as “premium mass customers” who still play at high limits. Appealing to these players appears to be working and altering the clientele at some properties.
“For now, as traffic and gaming demand has not yet recovered to its 2019 levels, MGM China and Wynn Macau, given their relatively smaller size and premium mass focused business, benefit from better operating efficiency including marketing and sales to premium clients,” Jennifer Song, an analyst at Morningstar in Shenzhen, China, told Reuters.
Macau also recently made some news in the poker world. The World Poker Tour recently canceled what would have been the company’s first event on the island.
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