May casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau is likely to rise by nearly 7 percent year-on-year and potentially by as much as 8.5 percent, buoyed by “healthy” minimum bets during the ongoing Labour Day holiday season. That is according to separate notes from CLSA Ltd and Seaport Research Partners.
China’s State Council has declared May 1 to May 5 inclusive a holiday period on the Chinese mainland, Macau’s main feeder market for tourists. Macau logged a total of 632,951 visitors between May 1 and May 3 inclusive, up 5.0 percent on last year’s opening three days of the May holiday season.
“We currently expect May 2026’s GGR to grow 6.6 percent year-on-year to MOP22.6 billion [US$2.80 billion], which we believe is achievable,” wrote CLSA analyst Jeffrey Kiang in a Sunday memo, following a visit to the city the previous day.
“This implies an average daily GGR of MOP729 million per day, similar to March 2026,” he added.
April’s GGR result, issued on Friday, had actually fallen 12.0 percent sequentially compared to March’s MOP22.61 billion. The April tally was up 5.5 percent year-on-year.
CLSA said there was a “rising propensity” for premium-mass segment gamblers “to travel to Macau during off-peak weeks”.
On that basis, “a strong tail end, roughly for a week,” in the aftermath of the May holidays, “is possible,” wrote Mr Kiang.
Vitaly Umansky, senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners, had said in a Friday memo after the April GGR figures: “We forecast May GGR to increase 8.5 percent year-on-year. While not always reflective of GGR strength, the Golden Week five-day holiday… is shaping up to have strong visitation and high hotel occupancy.
“We anticipate some customer trips were deferred from April into May.”
CLSA stated that it visited six Macau casino resorts in the Cotai district on Saturday: Galaxy Macau, run by Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd; The Venetian Macao and The Londoner Macao, run by Sands China Ltd; MGM Cotai, operated by MGM China Holdings Ltd; City of Dreams, run by Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd; and Wynn Palace, controlled by Wynn Macau Ltd.
Analyst Mr Kiang noted: “With growing foot traffic into casinos from noon onwards, minimum bets were healthy, HKD1,000 to HKD2,000 the most commonly seen on the general mass floor.”
He added: “For higher-limit areas, minimum bets were up to HKD5,000 for the casinos we visited.
“We saw two tables with a minimum bet of HKD10,000 at City of Dreams during our visit.”
The CLSA analyst further observed the institution saw newly-introduced Macau side bets ‘Monkey no Monkey’ and ‘Pairs+’ at Cotai properties including MGM Cotai and City of Dreams.
Mr Kiang stated: “While players’ adoption of side bets will take time, wider variations of games could underpin structurally higher win rates over time.”
