Citigroup is optimistic that gross gaming revenue (GGR) will achieve 6 percent year-on-year growth in the second half of the year, bringing 2025’s full-year increase to 4 percent
“After a slow start to 2025, Macao is seeing GGR growth re-acceleration in the second quarter of 2025 – 2 percent year-on-year in April, 5 percent year-on-year in May, and June is on track for another 5 percent year-on-year,” analysts George Choi and Timothy Chau said in a memo cited by industry website GGR Asia
The pair noted that the SAR’s casinos appeared to be “reaching an inflection point” and said they were “bullish” on the sector. Choi and Chau also said they viewed the government’s recent GGR forecast downgrade – from 5.82 percent year-on-year growth to just 0.53 percent – as a “bear-case scenario.”
[See more: Macao’s government revises the 2025 budget amid a gambling revenue dip]
According to Choi and Chau’s analysis, mainland Chinese visiting the city to gamble did not seem put off by stormy relations between China and US, and indeed remained “passionate about gaming,” they observed.
The analysts also refuted recent commentary around a perceived decline in “quality” of visitors based on the fact that while visitor numbers are increasing, their per capita spending is not. Choi and Chau pointed out that much of the increase was made up of day trippers from Zhuhai, and predicted that gambling was not their reason for coming to Macao.
“We think a better way to gauge the quality of real players is to compare GGR against overnight visitation, since most of the hotel rooms in Macao are ‘comped’ [provided free] to casino players,” they said. “As year-to-date GGR growth and overnight visitation growth are largely similar, our analysis concludes that per capita gaming spending – and thus player quality – is holding up well.”
