The over 35 casinos in Macau reportedly had a bad August after they chalked up an 8.6% year-on-year decrease in aggregated gross gaming revenues to come in at slightly over $3 billion.
According to a Sunday report from GGRAsia citing official figures from the enclave’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, the result for the 31-day period was around $284.38 million less than for the same month in 2018 and represented the fifth time since the start of January that the former Portuguese enclave’s casino industry had recorded such year-on-year drops in aggregated gross gaming revenues.
Typhoon trouble:
GGRAsia reported that the impact of early-August’s, Typhoon Lekima, could have played a major role in this most recent decline owing to the fact that the category-two storm caused widespread disruption and led Macau to temporarily suspend all inbound and outbound public transportation services. It explained that the ongoing trade war between the United States and China as well as the impacts of the recent political protests in nearby Hong Kong may have exacerbated this deterioration and led to fewer tourists opting to visit the city of some 667,400 inhabitants.
Annual anticlimax:
The figures from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau moreover showed that Macau’s aggregated gross gaming revenues for August were almost 0.8% down month-on-month and represented the largest comparable slump this year since April’s 8.3% deterioration to $2.92 billion. It additionally purportedly followed the year-on-year shrinkages registered for January, March and July and means that equivalent combined casino takings through the first nine months of 2019 stand some 1.9% lower at $24.53 billion.