Macau’s casino industry is entering a more mature phase that will require operators to rethink how they drive growth, said speakers at a panel titled “Financial Outlook for Asia’s IR Boom” on Tuesday, the first day of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2026 in Macau.
The pannelists said the Macau market still had growth potential, though the city’s operators faced mounting pressure from rising reinvestment costs, fierce competition and a slower recovery post-Covid-19 pandemic in premium-mass demand.
Speaking at the panel, Vitaly Umansky (pictured, centre), senior research analyst for global gaming at Seaport Research Partners, said Macau’s long-term challenge was no longer linked to attracting more gamblers from the same customer base, but broadening the appeal of casino resorts to new demographics.
“There is an argument to be made that we are in a mature market,” he said, referring to the existing universe of customers willing to travel to Macau, pay for hotel accommodation and spend on gaming.
“From an operator perspective, the long term is going to have to be figuring out how to appeal to a different type of demographic to drive profitability and growth,” he stated.
Mr Umansky noted that hotel capacity remained a significant constraint on recovery regarding the number of overnight visitors, particularly among the higher-margin base mass segment.
“Macau’s running at around 90 percent hotel occupancy,” he noted. “On weekends some properties are fully sold out. Even if we were to get more overnight visitors, where are these people staying?”
The discussion also highlighted growing concern about escalating operating costs and aggressive customer reinvestment strategies across Macau’s six concessionaires.
Mr Umansky said operators had increasingly lowered the threshold required for premium-player incentives, effectively paying more to retain business in an intensely competitive environment.
“Every single operator in Macau is buying business,” he said. “They have to do it because it’s such a competitive market.”
Margins, side bets
Mr Umansky said the trend had led to several consecutive quarters of outsized growth in operating expenses and player reinvestment ratios, particularly in the mass segment. “Profitability has been hit,” he added during the panel, moderated by Anthony Lawrence (pictured, left), managing director at Intelligence Macau Ltd.
Despite the pressure on margins, George Choi (pictured, right), head of global gaming research and regional conglomerates at Citi Research, struck a more optimistic tone on Macau’s outlook.
Mr Choi argued that spending power among Chinese consumers remained stronger than headline economic concerns might suggest, particularly among premium players. “The wealth is still there,” he said, pointing to high-value wagering activity observed on Macau’s casino floors.
He estimated Macau’s gaming industry in 2026 could achieve 8 percent year-on-year growth in terms of earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), supported by a 6-percent increase in gross gaming revenue.
Rather than relying heavily on macroeconomic indicators linked to China’s economy, Mr Choi said his forecasts were based largely on monthly floor checks and direct conversations with operators and industry participants.
The Citi analyst also highlighted new side-bet products and digital gaming innovations as a potential driver of future revenue growth, as these offerings could help boost theoretical win rates.
“I’ve been seeing the Lucky 6 and Lucky 7 side bets being wagered almost automatically,” Mr Choi stated.
Mr Umansky agreed that digital table technologies had enabled operators to introduce a wider variety of side bets, making games more appealing to certain players, particularly higher-value patrons.
But he cautioned that stronger top-line growth alone would not fully resolve Macau’s profitability challenges unless operators achieved better cost discipline or saw a meaningful recovery in premium overnight mass play.
“The high-margin part of the business is still soft,” he noted, estimating that the segment remained at about 30 percent to 35 percent below 2019 levels, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
