Financial research firm CreditSights Inc says Macau data regarding gross gaming revenue (GGR) and visitor arrivals in February suggest casino patrons have accounted for a higher proportion of all the visitors the city has been receiving, than they did in prior reporting periods. That was against the backdrop of a year-on-year decline in the total number of arrivals during February.
“The February 2025 data – higher GGR but lower overall visitations – suggests that there was likely a higher proportion of casino goers within the visitor mix, and perhaps also from more affluent regions during the month, which helped boost the average GGR per visitor higher by 12 percent year-on-year to MOP6,274 [US$783.3],” wrote CreditSights analysts Nicholas Chen and David Bussey in a Thursday report.
The institution observed that the GGR per visitor figure was “only a proxy for gaming spending per capita, as the Macau authorities does not disclose the latter specifically”.
Casino GGR in Macau rose 6.8 percent year-on-year in February to MOP19.74 billion, according to official data.
The February result – a month where the first four days were the tail end of the latest Chinese New Year holiday – was up 8.2 percent compared to January’s MOP18.25 billion.
The GGR tally in February was “amid higher visitor arrivals in the second half of the Chinese New Year, coupled with a longer tail,” noted the analysts.
Total visitor arrivals to Macau in February fell 4.4 percent year-on-year to just under 3.15 million, showed official figures.
CreditSights said that was “likely due to shorter Chinese New Year holiday window in February this year, which resulted in fewer overall Chinese visitors during the month relative to February 2024”.
“February’s year-on-year growth figure of 7 percent … also highlights the normalising GGR growth in the Macau gaming space, a trend we expect to continue for the rest of 2025,” stated the CreditSights’ analysts.
Aggregate GGR in the first two months of 2025 totalled MOP38.00 billion, up 0.5 percent on the same period in 2024. It represented circa 16 percent of the Macau government’s MOP240 billion forecast for 2025.
“We note this modestly lags the Macau government’s year-on-year growth expectation of plus 6 percent year-on-year for financial year 2025,” observed the institution.
