In September, gross revenue from Macau casinos increased 32.4% to 5.88 billion patacas ($735 million), up from 4.44 billion in August. Monitoring the region’s performance is always a good thermometer to measure the trend of gambling in Southeast Asia.
Gaming City’s Monthly Results
Macau casinos’ gross gaming revenue rose 32.4 per cent sequentially in September, hitting 5.88 billion patacas ($735 million), compared to 4.44 billion in August when a Covid-19 alert in Macau had led to a sharp drop in tourism in the city.
At the end of September, the daily volume of mainland tourists in Macau declined, coinciding with the fact that neighbouring Zhuhai in Guangdong Province introduced a 14-day quarantine for inbound travel from Macau after several new cases of Covid-19 were detected in Macau. However, the overall volume is higher than in August, which also explains this significant growth.
In fact, According to data published by the city’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (Dicj), September revenue increased by 165.9 per cent compared to the previous year when revenue was around 2.21 billion.
An outlook on how the market is doing in the area over the long term
September brought Macau’s third-quarter Gr to 18.77 billion, down 26.1 per cent from this year’s second-quarter revenue of around Mop 25.38 billion. Judged on a year-over-year basis, third-quarter Gr was up 283.8% from the just under 4.89 billion achieved in Q3 2020.
If we take a look at the cumulative result since the beginning of the year, September brings Macau’s revenue to 67.78 billion as of September 30, up 75.6 per cent year-on-year compared to Mop 38.61 billion for the first nine months of 2020.
How to explain this uneven performance of the area?
Certainly, last year was heavily impacted by the pandemic toward a major decline in the area’s revenue due to a large reduction in tourists. This effect may have been amplified by the misfortune of being the epicentre of the ongoing global pandemic. However, this year has also proved to be very uneven in terms of results in both the short and medium-term. Certainly, there are signs of recovery, but it will be necessary to wait for a further adjustment to start investing in the area again with a low-risk propensity.