Have high-stakes gamblers returned?
Macau casinos had one of their best months in recent memory, winning $2.6 billion from gamblers in March. That was an 18 percent gain year-over-year, about the same as the performance in February. The back-to-back 18 percent gains followed a lackluster January, when the market grew by just three percent.
According to a report from Reuters, analysts were predicting between 12 and 16 percent for March.
March’s uptick was the eighth straight month that gaming win increased year-over-year. The city’s gambling market contracted for about two years before the recent turnaround.
The $2.88 billion won in February was the most the casinos took from gamblers in a single month since early 2015.
Macau’s gaming market grew to more than $45 billion in 2013, but then Beijing started restricting the ability of high rollers to get money in Macau to gamble with. What happened next was a multi-year slump that saw citywide gaming win drop below $28 billion.
Prior to Macau’s sudden and steep downturn, it was predicted in a Wall Street Journal report that in 2017 the casino gambling market would hit $77 billion.
When gaming win grew one percent in August, it was the first uptick for the roughly three dozen casinos in 26 months. It looks like the recovery will continue indefinitely.
