Macau casinos see revenue loss for ninth consecutive month

In June, Macau’s casinos won $89.7 million from gamblers, according to numbers released by the gaming regulators in the region. Those figures represent a 97 percent year-over-year decline after operators won just shy of $3 billion from gamblers in June 2019.

The decline is also the former Portuguese colony’s ninth straight month of year-over-year drops in the gross gaming revenue, with June 97 percent drop being the largest in the history of the gambling industry in Macau. It beat out April’s 97 percent drop by a few decimal points.

It’s also a large fall from May’s numbers, which was diminished 93 percent year-over-year, but still accounted for $221 million in revenue.

Towards the end of 2019, the market was beginning to experience a pullback because of the political environment surrounding Macau, which included the threat of a trade war with the United States and escalating protests in Hong Kong.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated those problems and have caused more stark pullbacks in the market.

With the government now in the midst of handling a pandemic, more restrictions have been imposed, including tighter travel restrictions, including a mandatory 14-day quarantine from any visitor not from mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. The government has also made it much tougher to obtain a visa in recent months.

According to a Bloomberg report, analysts do not expect the market to bounce back anytime soon. Analysts forecast at least an 80 percent drop in GGR for July and anywhere between 38 and 65 percent for the entire year.

Those same analysts believe that whenever travel restrictions are lifted, the market will begin to rebound. However, a recent outbreak of coronavirus in Beijing, doesn’t bode well for that happening soon.