The Philippine casino sector produced approximately PHP25.8 billion (US$533.3 million) in gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the three months to December 31, up 62 percent from the third quarter. The quarterly result was still down 54.1 percent from the PHP56.23 billion recorded in the prior-year period.
The data was published by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), an operator of public-sector casinos as well as regulator and licensor of commercial-sector venues. The fourth-quarter industry GGR as reported by Pagcor has put the country’s aggregate GGR for the full year 2020, to PHP98.8 billion, or about US$2.04 billion, which was 54.3 percent down on 2019’s industry-wide GGR of PHP216.39 billion.
The aggregate GGR included bingo operations and parlours offering electronic games.
Full-year 2020 GGR produced by the private-sector casinos in Entertainment City in Manila, the Philippine capital, stood at PHP65.7 billion. That was 60.2 percent below the full-year 2019 GGR produced by the Entertainment City casinos, which stood at PHP165.28 billion.
An extensive lockdown for Metro Manila, including for its large-scale casino resorts in Entertainment City, was first announced in mid-March as part of Covid-19 countermeasures, and was subsequently extended in increments although the terms were relaxed somewhat.
The current countermeasure for the National Capital Region – at the level of “general community quarantine” – runs until February 28.
Since June, casino firms – including large-scale private sector sites in Manila -have been allowed to resume business via “trial run operations” at 30 percent capacity.
Nationwide, the private-sector casinos – including those in Clark Freeport and elsewhere – produced approximately PHP19.2 billion in the three months to December 31. Private-sector casinos based in Entertainment City accounted for about PHP16.90 billion in GGR in the period.
Pagcor’s own casinos – branded Casino Filipino – saw their fourth-quarter GGR at PHP2.44 billion, up from PHP914.7 million in the previous quarter.
