Macau’s gaming revenue grew 12.5% year-on-year in June to MOP$22.49 billion.
The figure represents 23 consecutive months of GGR growth for Asia’s gaming hub but is down on the MOP$25.49 billion in revenue Macau’s gaming industry raked in during May. It also falls short of predictions of 20% growth on the back of the recent dragon boat holiday and the opening of Morpheus at City of Dreams in mid-June.
Bernstein analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Kelsey Zhu pointed to the World Cup in Russia as creating some negative headwind in the second half of June but noted that 2Q18 GGR growth of 17.2% was a deceleration from 20.5% growth in the first quarter. They added that the deceleration was also significantly greater than in 2Q17 when GGR slowed by just -0.9% quarter-on-quarter, predicting further deceleration in both year-on-year and sequential growth for the remainder of the year.
Macau’s revenue for the first six months of 2018 reached MOP$150.22 billion, an increase of 18.9% on the MOP$126.38 billion Macau’s casinos raked in over the same period in 2017.