Record-breaking casino revenue in Macau during the past month, marking the highest earnings since the outbreak of the pandemic.
**Macau's Gambling Gold Rush in May 2025
Touting its firmest monthly gaming revenue since January 2020, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) reported a whopping MOP 21.19 billion ($2.62 billion) haul for May 2025. Here's what ignited the party in the gambling mecca.
Fueling the Frenzy
Several factors conspired to make May a winner for Macau's gambling industry:
- Chinese Holidays: The long stretch of Chinese holidays, especially the Labour Day Golden Week (May 1-5), boosted visitor numbers by almost 850,000. With such a crowd, these holidays whipped up a whirlwind of casino activity, nudging daily gross gaming revenue (GGR) to mega heights of MOP 1 billion during the festivities.
- Swanky Splash: The soft opening of the chichi Capella Macau at Galaxy Macau engaged VIPs with a ravishing 25-30% boost in turnover. Coupled with a higher VIP win rate of 3.5-3.7%, the math began to add up, lifting average daily GGR to a sweet MOP 700 million for the month.
- Lackluster Overall Growth: Despite the eye-popping May figures, the year-to-date GGR totaled merely MOP 97.7 billion, a modest 1.7% increase from the same period in 2024. Even though it's an improvement, the monthly average of MOP 19.54 billion still falls short of the MOP 20 billion benchmark needed to meet the government's full-year target of MOP 240 billion. When compared to 2019, the current total stands at 77.7% of the pre-Covid trove.
Stretching Ahead
Macau's gaming sector enjoyed a three-month winning streak, with May's 12.4% progress over April. As we gallop toward the National Day Golden Week in October, industry bigwigs anticipate further gains, outpacing other gaming hubs like Las Vegas, which took a tumble in Q1 2025.
Yet, even as Macau's gambling sector shimmies back to vibrancy, it's still fighting to overthrow the clutch of the pandemic and regain its pre-Covid luster.
The casinos in Macau saw an increase in revenue due to the trend of casino-games, as a result of the long Chinese holidays and the soft opening of the Capella Macau, which boosted VIP turnover by 25-30% and raised the average daily GGR to MOP 700 million for May 2025. Despite the impressive May figures, the gambling trends indicate that Macau needs to reach a monthly average of MOP 20 billion to meet the government's full-year target of MOP 240 billion, which is still short of the pre-Covid level.
