Macau Springs Back to Life With Best Post-COVID Month, Casino Win Tops $2.6 Billion
Posted on: June 2, 2025, 07:21h.
Last updated on: June 2, 2025, 09:44h.
- Macau casino revenue topped $2.62 billion in May 2025
- May 2025 was the market’s best post-COVID-19 revenue month
- Sands, Galaxy, MGM, Wynn, Melco, and SJM are licensed in the Chinese enclave
The adage that April showers bring May flowers apparently extends to Asia and China’s Macau where casino revenue reached a new post-COVID-19 high.
Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, the city’s gaming regulator that tallies casino revenue daily and, therefore, issues its monthly gross gaming revenue (GGR) on the first of each month, said the six casino operators combined to win MOP21.19 billion (US$2.62 billion) in May 2025. The tally represents a 12.4% premium from April and a 5% improvement from May 2024.
May’s impressive performance takes year-to-date GGR to approximately $12.1 billion, 1.7% higher than where the casinos stood at this time last year.
Market Rebound
The 2025 edition of China’s Labor Day, an annual May 1 public holiday that celebrates workers with a week of paid time off, saw demand for leisure travel return, with Macau being a premier destination for many mainland travelers.
Macau welcomed more than 850K visitors during the May 1 to May 5 period. During the bustling holiday when many Cotai Strip and downtown Macau casino resorts were sold out, daily GGR exceeded $123.9 million.
Macau’s Statistics and Census Service hasn’t yet released full visitor data for May, but observers are forecasting a steep year-over-year increase.
At more than $2.62 billion, May 2025 was the casinos’ best GGR month since Chinese President Xi Jinping ended his controversial “zero-COVID” policy in late 2022. While many other world leaders had long ended most of their pandemic response protocols, Xi continued his draconian program for many more months, which included isolated lockdowns and authoritarian travel restrictions amid the detection of even a single COVID-19 case.
A Bit of Optimism Sets In
Macau is a vastly different gaming market than it was before the pandemic. At Xi’s order, the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government forced out VIP junket groups that had for many years kept Macau’s private high-roller rooms busy.
Xi raised concerns about the billions of dollars of monthly financial outflow from the mainland through the tax haven. As a result, Macau’s casinos have been forced to switch their focus to the mass public and premium-mass players.
The casinos’ hands were also forced through their December 2022 relicensing in which the SAR used the opportunity to require the gaming firms to invest more than $16 billion in nongaming amenities. The goal is to attract nongamblers and diversify the region away from gaming, which currently generates about 80 cents of every tax dollar the local government collects.
The changing conditions subdued analyst expectations for 2025. But through five months, opinions are slightly changing.
Macau has shown that the market demand and earnings are far more resilient than anticipated,” a note from JP Morgan read. Citing ‘better-than-feared’ early results with ‘two consecutive GGR beats’ in April and May, the JP Morgan analysts said the landscape seems to be stabilizing.
JP Morgan is forecasting further growth in June, with year-over-year GGR climbing 3.4%.
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