It’s the third-highest tally on Citigroup’s records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Macau.-\u00a0Citigroup\u00a0<\/strong>has reported that premium mass wagers in Macau reached HK$21m (US$2.7m) on the third day of Chinese New Year (CNY). That\u2019s the third-highest tally on its records. The survey observed 799 players in the premium mass category, the second-highest number since the end of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions in January 2023. The average bet per player was HK$26,224.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The survey observed\u00a049 whales<\/strong>\u00a0(players with bets of HK$100,000 per hand or more), versus 41 a year ago. The average wager per whale reached HK$210,000. Citigroup said the \u201cPlayer of the Month\u201d was spotted placing a bet of HK$800,000 in the Diamond Club of Wynn Palace. The second-highest wager was from a whale spotted at a reserved table at the Horizon Room at Galaxy Macau placing a bet of HK$550,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analysts\u00a0George Choi\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Timothy Chau <\/strong>said the timing was too early to capture the presence of mainland tourists from further than Guangdong province, which is adjacent to Macau. In 2024, analysts conducted their survey on February 16, the penultimate day of the CNY Golden Week, when most players were present and had not yet departed from Macau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Macau has recorded 873,780 visitors for the first five days of the CNY holiday week. That\u2019s an average of 174,756 arrivals per day. The highest single-day tally<\/strong> was 219,119 arrivals on Friday. This was followed by Saturday (218,396) and Sunday (189,158). There were 172,783 arrivals on Thursday and 131,896 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The numbers show a decline of 8.6 per cent compared to the 2024 Lunar New Year Golden Week, which ran from February 10 to February 17 that year. Last year, there were 1,357,064 visitor arrivals<\/strong> during the holidays, and the city\u2019s average hotel occupancy rate peaked at 95.2 per cent. The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) director, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes<\/strong>, has said she expected Macau to receive an average of 185,000 daily visitor arrivals during this year\u2019s holdiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See also: <\/strong>Macau aims to match pre-pandemic overseas tourism numbers this year<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) <\/strong>reported that Macau\u2019s gross gaming revenue (GGR) for January was MOP18.25bn (US$2.27bn)<\/strong>. That\u2019s a decrease of 5.6 per cent in year-on-year terms<\/a> but a rise of 0.3 per cent compared to the previous month<\/a>. Compared to the same month in 2019, the figure was down by 19.4 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result was widely expected due to the earlier timing of the New Year, which began in January in 2024 but this year began in February. Analysts at Citigroup had forecast that January\u2019s GGR would reach MOP17.5bn (US$2.2bn) and Morgan Stanley had forecast MOP18.8bn (US$2.3bn). For February, JP Morgan expects GGR to be up 3 per cent to 5 per cent year-on-year, to about MOP19bn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s the third-highest tally on Citigroup’s records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":21522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Citigroup reported Macau's premium mass wagers reached HK$21m on the third day of Chinese New Year, marking the third-highest tally on record, with significant whale activity. Despite strong premium mass performance and high visitor arrivals, January's GGR of MOP18.25bn saw a 5.6% year-on-year decrease, attributed to the earlier timing of CNY in 2024. Analysts forecast February GGR to rebound, indicating a nuanced recovery trajectory for the market.","focusai_entities":"Citigroup, Wynn Palace, Galaxy Macau, George Choi, Timothy Chau, Macau Government Tourist Office, Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan","focusai_location":"Macau, Guangdong","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (0.7), operator_casino (1.0), marketing_crm (0.7), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Premium Mass Sustainability","query":"What are the long-term projections for Macau's premium mass segment growth, and what strategic initiatives are operators implementing to sustain this high-value player base beyond peak holiday periods?"},{"label":"GGR Forecast Accuracy","query":"How do the current GGR figures and analyst forecasts for Macau align with broader economic indicators and evolving tourism policies, particularly regarding mainland China visitor flows?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,16338],"tags":[23907,23906],"class_list":["post-777022569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-casino-news","category-east-asia-news","tag-land-based-casino","tag-macau-casinos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777022569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777022569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777022569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777022593,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777022569\/revisions\/777022593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777022569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777022569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777022569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Macau GGR dips in January<\/h2>\n\n\n\n