Macau GGR up 108% between May 1 and 9

Macau’s GGR was up 108 per cent when compared to the previous week, mainly due to the Labour Day break.

Macau.- Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd has reported that gross gaming revenue in Macau was up 108 per cent week-on-week for the week ended May 9. The figure was also up 124 per cent when compared to April.

According to the brokerage, the city has recorded daily casino gross gaming revenue of MOP200m (US$24.7m) and a month-to-date GGR of MOP1.8bn. The growth was mainly due to China’s Labour Day break which saw 136,647 people visit Macau.

However, the figure represents a drop of 18.2 per cent compared to 2021, when 165,500 tourists visited Macau during the break, and it’s a long way from pre-pandemic numbers. In 2019, 636,600 people visited Macau during the break.

Analysts said Macau’s GGR was down 76 per cent during the first nine days of May when compared to pre-pandemic levels.

They added: “We forecast May 2022 GGR to be down 80 per cent versus May 2019 but could easily be lower…if travel does not pick up during the month.”

Mainland China continues to be the only country to have a largely quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau. 

As previously reported by Focus Gaming News, Professor Davis Fong, director of the Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming, has suggested that Macau’s GGR could equal 2021 levels as long as the city maintains an average of between 20.000 and 30.000 visitors per day. Fong says this would be possible as long as visitation rises to where it was before the latest Covid-19 surge in Guangdong.