- Macau’s gaming industry had their lowest revenue in history during June 2020.
- It was actually worse than April when Macau’s casinos were just reopening after a two week closure.
- June 2020 gaming revenues were down -97% from one year ago.
Nevada’s gaming industry isn’t the only one being brutalized by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Asian gaming epicenter of Macau has been hit hard all year but June’s numbers set a new low for monthly gaming revenue. The Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DIJC) announced that casinos brought in only $89.7 million USD making June the worst month in the history of their gaming industry. In addition, the 97% drop from June 2019 was the biggest year to year drop ever recorded. The previous low can be seen in the gaming revenues for April 2020 which were $94.4 million USD representing a 96.8% drop from April 2019’s $2.95 billion USD. June’s horrific revenue numbers are all the more disappointing as they came on the heels of a slight uptick in May.
The big issue remains border closures that limit travel from their biggest customer bases. The Chinese government has closed the borders of Guangdong province and Hong Kong to help slow the spread of COVID-19. The expectation was that these travel restrictions would have eased by this point but as of yet that hasn’t occurred. The year over year decline in June was more severe than in February when Macau’s casinos were closed for 15 days. In February 2019, Macau’s gaming revenues were a healthy $2.975 billion USD. In February 2020, revenues were $391.5 million representing a drop of 87.8%. For the year, Macau’s gaming revenues are off by 77.4% against the first six months of 2019.
Here’s the chart of the carnage from the DICJ website. Revenue figures are reported in Macanese Pataca which has the charming abbreviation ‘MOP’. At current exchange rates, 1 Macanese Pataca aka MOP is worth 0.13 USD. Here’s a helpful tip–if you want to plug these revenue figures into a currency exchange you’ll need to add ‘000,000’ to the back end of the numbers reported below:
It’s not quite as bad of a drop as Nevada experienced over the past couple of months. Of course, the Silver State’s gaming industry was shut down entirely so the only revenue coming in was via online poker and mobile sportsbook apps. Nevada’s gaming industry reopened on June 4th so we won’t get any data on revenue until the end of July. By all accounts, the Las Vegas market was busy over the 4th of July weekend with heavy traffic reported along I-15 South on Sunday. I-15 South is the primary conduit between Southern California and Southern Nevada. At one point, there was a 12 mile backup.
