Macau gross gaming revenue (GGR) per capita among the city’s visitors has been declining year-on-year in 2025, and remains far from being able to support the local government’s 2025 revenue target for the city’s casino industry. That is in the context of a year-on-year rise during the first four months of the year in the total number of visitors, contrasting with a flat overall GGR performance for the same period, noted two finance-sector institutions in separate notes.
GGR per visitor “remains under pressure” while visitor arrival numbers are increasing, “suggesting more leisure visitors (or lower value players),” wrote analysts Jeffrey Kiang and Leo Pan of brokerage CLSA Ltd, in a Wednesday report.
CLSA said it expected GGR per visitor for full-year 2025 to contract by 6.6 percent year-on-year, to MOP6,064 [circa US$758].” That was because the brokerage was still expecting GGR to grow 1.8 percent – to MOP230.8 billion – in 2025 calendar year, while it assumed visitor arrival volume to Macau during the same period to go up at a much faster rate of 9.0 percent, to 38.1 million.
In a note issued on Thursday, research house CreditSights Inc, a division of the Fitch group, also expressed a bearish view on GGR per visitor performance in Macau for 2025. “We still expect GGR per visitor to remain constrained by visitation upside largely coming from the less affluent regions of China with lower GDP per capita,” it said.
Analysts Nicholas Chen and David Bussey wrote: “Unless we see sustained improvements in visitations as well as a notable uptick in GGR per visitor in the coming months, we see a high likelihood that Macau falls short of the government’s original [GGR] target”.
In November the Macau government had forecast Macau’s 2025 casino GGR might reach MOP240 billion which would be a circa 5.8-percent year-on-year improvement on the MOP226.78-billion achieved in 2024.
“While still possible, in order to hit this target, we would have to see a combination of accelerating visitations – versus 2019 levels – and sequential improvements in GGR spend per visitation,” said CreditSights.
It added: “GGR per visitor would need to settle around MOP6,300 for full-year 2025, a decline of 3 percent year-on-year.”
For the first four months of 2025, GGR per visitor stood at around MOP5,906, down 10.7 percent in year-on-year terms. GGR per visitor in April was MOP6,097.
The decline in per capita spending per visitor is also impacting non-gaming expenses. In the first quarter of 2025, total non-gaming spending of visitors to Macau decreased by 3.6 percent year-on-year to MOP19.62 billion, whereas per-capita non-gaming spending of visitors went down by 13.2 percent to MOP1,989, show data from the city’s Statistics and Census Service.
According to CLSA, GGR spend per visitor during the first quarter of 2025 was down 9.5 percent year-on-year, to MOP5,846.
Macau registered 12.96 million visitor arrivals in the calendar year to April 30, up 12.91 percent from the prior-year period.
CLSA observed in its report, referring to Macau gaming-sector margins on earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA): “Following resilient EBITDA margin in first quarter 2025, growth of Macau’s GGR remains very modest, while competition is intensifying.”
The brokerage forecasts second-quarter 2025 EBITDA for the Macau gaming sector to be flat year-on-year at US$1.96 billion.
‘Depressed’ consumer confidence
CLSA stated: “In our view… depressed China consumer confidence remains the key macro indicator of Macau’s muted GGR growth.”
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, China’s reported consumer confidence index in March was close to being at a 35-year low.
The brokerage didn’t mention reasons for the dip in consumer confidence. In a question-and-answer session with the media after his April Policy Address speech, Macau’s Chief Executive, Sam Hou Fai, had referred to potentially “huge” impacts from the ongoing United States-China trade tariff row, including on the value of China’s currency the yuan and on the consumption power of mainland China visitors to Macau.
CLSA said in its Wednesday update that Chinese consumer sentiment – when positive – has previously shown correlation with Macau GGR performance. It stated: “China’s consumer confidence index has increased with Macau’s GGR per day from 2016 to 2019, while we have seen a similar pattern from 2024 onwards: after digesting the pent-up demand in 2023.”
The institution observed that “excluding seasonality” – i.e., peak demand periods such as holidays on the Chinese mainland, Macau’s main tourism feeder market – the city’s average daily GGR has ranged from MOP600 million per day to MOP650 million per day from January 2024 to March 2025.
CreditSights observed in its Wednesday report: “We see room for a better GGR print year-on-year in May, thanks to stronger year-on-year visitations during the recent Labour Day holiday (1 to 5 May) coupled with mega concerts taking place during the month.”
