GGRAsia – Philippine 2Q casino GGR down 27pct q-o-q at US$373mln

Philippine 2Q casino GGR down 27pct q-o-q at US$373mln

Aug 20, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Philippines, Top of the deck

The Philippine casino sector produced gross gaming revenue (GGR) of nearly PHP18.80 billion (US$373.0 million) in the three months to June 30, down 27.0 percent on the PHP25.74 billion generated in the first quarter. The figure excludes revenue from bingo operations and from electronic game parlours.

That is according to data released this week by the country’s casino regulator, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), based on information submitted by Pagcor to the nation’s Governance Commission for Government-owned or Controlled Corporations.

Second-quarter casino GGR in the Philippines was up by almost 690 percent in year-on-year terms, as most of the industry was shut during the three months to June 30, 2020, as part of temporary measures nationwide to contain the further local spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The latest data took the first-half 2021 GGR tally industry-wide to PHP44.54 billion. The figure was down by 7.8 percent in year-on-year terms.

The sequential decline in second-quarter GGR coincided with a period of so-called enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila, home to the large-scale casino resorts of Entertainment City.

The national government measure saw Manila casinos shuttered from late March and for a portion of the second quarter. The second-quarter data showed however sequential GGR improvement for some properties outside Metro Manila.

Manila’s Entertainment City casinos produced in the second quarter 78.0 percent of all industry GGR, i.e., nearly PHP14.67 billion. The figure was nonetheless 30.5 percent down quarter-on-quarter, on the almost PHP21.12 billion GGR that Entertainment City properties generated in the first three months of 2021.

The cluster of casinos in the Clark Freeport Zone, also on the country’s main island, Luzon, generated PHP2.24 billion GGR in the second quarter, which was up 19.1 percent on the PHP1.88 billion generated in the first quarter.

The two Thunderbird Resorts and Casinos gaming properties, under the Fiesta brand at respectively Poro Point on the northwest coast of Luzon, and Rizal, in central Luzon saw a sequential dip in GGR in the second quarter. Such GGR fell 67.9 percent, quarter-on-quarter, to PHP86.93 million, from PHP271.19 million.

At Pagcor-operated casinos, second-quarter table games GGR fell 35.4 percent sequentially, to PHP486.2 million, from just under PHP752.5 million.

Pagcor-run slot GGR was down 27.1 percent quarter-on-quarter, at just under PHP1.07 billion, from PHP1.46 billion in the first quarter.

The corporation’s own junket GGR performance was down 5.0 percent at nearly PHP243.5 million in the three months to June 30, versus PHP256.2 million in the first quarter.

Total Pagcor-property generated GGR in the second quarter was PHP1.80 billion. It was 9.6 percent of all industry GGR, for the period, and down 27.3 percent sequentially on the almost PHP2.48-billion Pagcor-property GGR in the first three months of the year.