Credit and market research provider CreditSights Inc says it expects Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) to post a “low-to-mid-single digit” growth in full-year 2026, though average GGR per visitor would in likelihood see a “more difficult path” for growth.
In a Monday report, the institution noted that while Macau’s casino GGR last year rose 9.1 percent year-on-year to MOP247.40 billion (US$30.86 billion), the GGR per visitor stood at MOP6,174, which it said was down 5 percent year-on-year.
“The full year GGR growth was largely driven by the VIP segment, which had jumped to 24 percent year-on-year (2024: +21 percent year-on-year) in 2025 and now forms 27 percent of the total 2025 GGR (2024: 24 percent),” wrote CreditSights’ analysts Nicholas Chen and David Bussey.
“Mass gaming revenue – 73 percent of total 2025 GGR – had also increased, albeit at a smaller rate of just 4 percent year-on-year,” they noted.
The analysts suggested that the “strong growth” in Macau’s VIP play segment in 2025 was likely due to a “positive wealth effect from the equity market rallies seen in China and Hong Kong” during the year.
Looking into 2026, the institution said it saw “potential” for Macau’s GGR to show “moderate” growth.
“We expect the healthy demand trends as witnessed in the second half of 2025, particularly from the VIP segment, to carry into early 2026 and an easy year-on-year comparison should support healthy growth to start the year,” the analysts stated.
They further noted: “While the year-on-year comparison becomes more challenging in the back half of 2026, we still see the potential for moderate – low-to-mid-single digit – GGR growth in 2026.”
CreditSights, a unit of Fitch Group, however has a more dampen outlook for Macau’s GGR per visitor this year.
“Visitor arrivals from the more affluent regions of China have already mostly recovered back or surpassed pre-Covid levels, and further visitation recovery is likely to come largely from the less affluent regions with less spending power,” the analysts suggested.
“We think this could offset any upside from more higher-spending punters from the VIP segment,” they added.
The institution said however that the figure for GGR per visitor was “only a proxy” for gaming spending per capita, as the latter figure is not disclosed specifically by the Macau authorities.
In 2025, Guangdong continued to be Macau’s leading feeder market for mainland tourists, accounting for nearly 59 percent of the aggregate of 29.02-million arrivals from the Chinese mainland, according to data from Macau’s Statistics and Census. The 2025 number of Guangdong visitors was just above 17.10 million, up 30.4 percent year-on-year; the tally was also 33.4 percent higher versus 2019.
The top three non-Guangdong mainland feeder markets for Macau in 2025 were: Zhejiang province (888,492), Shanghai city (853,966), and Jiangsu province (817,410). The 2025 volume of visitors from Zhejiang marked a 12.6 percent growth from 2019 levels, according to data from the statistics service; while the 2025 Shanghai visitor volume was 18.3 percent higher than 2019.
Macau set a record for annual visitor arrivals, recording about 40.07-million tourist entries in full-year 2025, according to official data.
