Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for August was up 450 percent sequentially from July’s recent-records low.
The August aggregate was just under MOP2.19 billion (US$270.8 million), but that was still down 50.7 percent from August 2021’s figure, according to data released on Thursday by the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
The latest result meant Macau’s average daily GGR during Aug 1 to 31 was MOP71 million, observed brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd in a Thursday note, adding this was “still lower than the May level” of MOP100 million-plus per day.
“The recovery is still constrained by travel restrictions and Covid outbreaks and lockdowns in [mainland] China, with customers remaining cautious to travel, in fear of government suddenly imposing lockdown orders,” added the memo from analysts Vitaly Umansky, Louis Li, and Shirley Yang.
Up to August 3 this year, outbound travel from Macau to Zhuhai, in the neighbouring mainland China province of Guangdong, had been subject to a quarantine-on-arrival in Zhuhai.
August’s sequential improvement in GGR coincided with an improvement in tourism numbers, following July’s poor showing, which had been affected by a 12-day shutdown of the casinos amid the worst community outbreak of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
Last week the Macao Government Tourism Office said that the city had an aggregate of 103,162 tourist arrivals from August 20 to 26 inclusive; a daily average of 14,737.
The daily average was 18.0 percent up on the 12,485 daily tally for the seven days from August 13 to 19 inclusive.
In the eight months to August 31 this year, Macau’s cumulative casino GGR was nearly MOP28.86 billion, down by 53.4 percent in year-on-year terms.
(Updated 4.43pm, Sept 1)
