Macau Gaming Revenue Climbs 6.7% but the Growth Is Cooling

Macau gaming revenue rose 6.7 percent year-on-year in May to MOP22.6 billion (US$2.80 billion), the territory’s casino regulator reported on Monday, beating the roughly 6.6 percent that analysts had pencilled in and matching the takings the hub booked in January and March. Five months into 2026, total gross gaming revenue (GGR, the amount casinos win from players before costs) stands at MOP108.4 billion, up 10.9 percent on the same stretch of last year.

Strip out a blockbuster January and the recovery looks calmer than the headline suggests. The annual growth rate has narrowed in every cumulative reading since winter, and the extra money is arriving from more people through the doors rather than bigger bets on the floor.

May’s Takings Beat the Forecast

The month landed at the upper end of what the street expected. Jeffrey Kiang, an analyst at brokerage CLSA, had forecast May growth of 6.6 percent, while Seaport Research Partners looked for 8.5 percent. The actual figure, released in the regulator’s monthly gaming revenue tables, split the two and cleared the more cautious call.

May usually gets a lift from the Labour Day Golden Week, when mainland Chinese travellers flood the Cotai Strip. Macau counted 632,951 arrivals over the first three days of the holiday alone, up 5 percent on the same window a year earlier, and the foot traffic showed up in the baccarat and slot numbers.

Here is how the month stacked up.

• 6.7 percent year-on-year growth, ahead of the 6.6 percent CLSA had modelled
• 632,951 visitors in the first three days of Labour Day Golden Week, up 5 percent
• MOP21.68 billion average monthly revenue so far in 2026, well above the government’s break-even pace

The Annual Growth Rate Has Cooled Since January

The number that should give the cheerleaders pause is the trend, not the level. January opened the year with a bang, MOP22.63 billion and growth of 24 percent against a soft base a year earlier. Nothing since has come close.

February slowed to 4.5 percent. April was the year’s softest month in absolute terms at MOP19.9 billion, though still 5.5 percent up on the prior year. May’s gain sits in the middle of that pack. Read cumulatively, the deceleration is clean and steady.

Each milestone this year has carried a smaller growth rate than the one before it, as the favourable comparison with a still-recovering 2025 fades month by month.

None of this means the recovery is stalling. It means the easy gains are behind it, and the back half of the year will have to grow against far tougher comparisons than the start did.

Visitors Are Up, Spend Per Head Is Down

The arithmetic behind the cooling growth is straightforward. Macau is pulling in record crowds, but each visitor is leaving a little less at the tables. Arrivals reached 11.2 million in the first quarter, up 13.7 percent, while gaming spend per visitor in April fell 5 percent to MOP5,781, a sign the incoming mix skews toward day-trippers and smaller punters rather than the high rollers who once powered the city.

The split between bodies and bets shows up plainly in the government’s first-quarter Macau tourism statistics.

• 11.2 million visitors in the first quarter, up 13.7 percent year-on-year
• MOP5,781 average gaming spend per visitor in April, down 5 percent
• 124,599 average daily arrivals in the quarter, up 14 percent

Non-Gaming Money Is Filling the Gap

What the casinos lose in betting intensity, the wider economy is recouping at the shops and restaurants. Non-gaming spending by visitors hit a record MOP24.43 billion in the first quarter, up 24.5 percent and equal to 144 percent of the comparable 2019 figure.

Per-visitor non-gaming spend rose 9.5 percent to MOP2,179, the mirror image of the gaming-spend slide. Mainland travellers from Shanghai, Guangdong and Jiangsu did much of the spending, while visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan lifted their non-gaming outlay by 37 percent.

That shift is precisely what Beijing has pushed for, nudging the enclave away from pure gambling toward shows, dining and retail. It broadens the economy, and Macau’s GDP grew 7.1 percent in the quarter on the strength of it. It does not, however, feed the gaming tax the way a busy VIP room does.

Operators Feel It in the Margins

The squeeze shows up clearest in the operators’ own books. MGM China, the local arm of MGM Resorts, reported first-quarter net revenue of HK$8.8 billion, up 10 percent, when it published its first-quarter results announcement on April 29.

Profit told a softer story. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, a common cash-profit gauge) grew just 4 percent to HK$2.5 billion, well behind the revenue line.

Daily mass-market GGR at the operator jumped 19 percent to a record. Winning more low- and mid-stakes players, though, costs more in promotions, staff and complimentary rooms than reeling in a handful of whales.

That is the trade-off the whole market is making. Volume-led revenue is steadier and less prone to the bad-debt blowups that haunted the junket era, but it converts less of every dollar into profit.

Morgan Stanley flagged the pattern late last year, warning that Macau’s 2026 revenue growth could outpace Singapore and Las Vegas while delivering only weak EBITDA gains. The May data does nothing to challenge that read.

The Full-Year Target Looks Beatable

For all the worry about quality, the headline math still points to a beat. The Macau government’s 2026 budget assumes full-year GGR of MOP236 billion (US$29.4 billion), which works out to MOP19.66 billion a month.

The territory is running comfortably ahead of that pace at MOP21.68 billion a month through May. Even if the second half cools further against harder comparisons, clearing the official target looks achievable, and several research houses already expect the year to finish above forecast.

The figure to watch from here is not the monthly headline but the spend-per-visitor line, the one metric that separates a healthy boom from a crowded one.

If per-head gaming spend stabilises while the crowds keep growing, Macau beats its target on solid footing. If the per-visitor slide deepens, the city clears MOP236 billion on volume alone, and the profit operators book from that record keeps lagging the takings they report.