Slot-machine gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau reached MOP10.92 billion (US$1.36 billion) in full-year 2023, accounting for nearly 6.0 percent of the aggregate MOP183.06 billion recorded last year, according to official data.
Revenue from slot machines last year recovered to 72.1 percent of 2019, the last trading year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, showed the data published earlier this month by the city’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
The Macau market had a total of 12,000 slot machines in 2023, compared to 17,009 in 2019.
A cross-referencing of gaming bureau data shows that, on average, each slot machine in Macau generated about MOP909,583 in full-year 2023. The figure compared with nearly MOP890,000 per unit in 2019.
In August 2022, the Macau government announced the aggregate number of the city’s gaming tables and gaming machines that can be exploited at any one time by the city’s gaming concessionaires, as well as the minimum annual target of casino GGR to be generated from each gaming table and each gaming machine.
Both parameters took effect from January 1, 2023, in tandem with the new 10-year gaming concessions. Under the relevant Chief Executive dispatch, the maximum number of gaming tables to be operated in aggregate by all gaming concessionaires in the city is 6,000. Up to 12,000 gaming machines are permitted at any one time in the Macau market.
The Chief Executive dispatch stated that the minimum annual limit of gross revenue to be generated from each gaming table was MOP7.0 million; and that of each gaming machine was MOP300,000.
The highest GGR per slot machine had been recorded in 2014, when the Macau market had 13,018 units in operation, according to official data. That year, each machine produced, on average, about MOP1.11 million in revenue, or MOP14.44 billion in total.
