Post-pandemic good news has emerged at last for Macau’s gaming operators with a huge 229% month-to-month sequential increase in gross gaming revenue for October.
While gross gaming revenue declined by 72.5% year-on-year to MOP$7.27 billion (US$911 million) in October, it represents an enormous increase in the context of 2020 with GGR for the previous six months ranging from MOP$716 million (US$89.7 million) to MOP$2.21 billion (US$277.8 million).
October’s GGR figure comes after China reinstated the Individual Visit Scheme for residents of Zhuhai from 12 August, all of Guangdong Province from 26 August and all of mainland China from 23 September. The first IVS applications for Guangdong residents were approved on 1 September. China’s Golden Week, which occurs in the first week of October, was eagerly anticipated by the industry as a possible boost to Macau’s post-COVID GGR recovery, but was generally considered disappointing by experts, with visitation down 85.7% year-on-year.
IVS accounted for 46.8% of the 27.9 million mainland Chinese visitors to enter Macau in 2019.
For the first 10 months of 2020, Macau’s GGR is down 81.4% year-on-year to MOP$45.9 billion (US$5.75 billion) compared with MOP$246.7 billion (US$30.9 billion) over the same period in 2019.
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