Macau’s gaming revenue slumps for eighth straight month

Gaming revenue in Macau fell for the eighth straight month in January, by 17.4 per cent from a year ago to 23,748 million patacas.

Although steadying from the 30.4 per cent year-on-year drop experienced in December, analysts believe the new figure falls far short of a recovery.

“As December GGR (gross gaming revenue) was hurt by traffic control around President Xi [Jinping’s] visit, January improvement mainly represents a normalisation rather than a fundamental change,” Credit Suisse analysts Kenneth Fong and Isis Wong wrote in a note.

Last year Macau’s gross casino revenue registered its first yearly fall of 2.6 per cent since the government started recording data in 2002.

Last Thursday, Secretary of Social and Cultural Affairs Alex Tam announced the government will submit a bill to the legislative council proposing a full smoking ban in casinos. It follows a smoking ban that was imposed on mass casino floors on October 6 but allowed for smoking in VIP rooms and for operators to build smoking rooms.

”This would impact both the VIP gaming rooms (which still allow smoking) and the smoking lounges on the mass floor (built after October 2014’s mass gaming area smoking ban),” Daiwa gaming analyst Jamie Soo said in a report on Monday.