In the Philippines, last year reportedly saw annual aggregated gross gaming revenues increase by 22.9% year-on-year to top $3.6 billion as the combined figure for the Asian nation’s private-sector casino industry rose by 28.3% to reach in excess of $2.9 billion.

Commercial dominance:

According to a Tuesday report from GGRAsia citing official figures from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation regulator, commercial casinos were responsible for some 81% of the country’s aggregated gross gaming revenues in 2018 with the vast majority of this amount emanating from the four large gambling venues located in and around Manila. These properties, which encompass Resorts World Manila, Solaire Resort and Casino, City of Dreams Manila and Okada Manila, had a good year as they helped to push overall private-sector takings well beyond 2017’s shared tally of $2.2 billion.

State-run prevalence:

In addition to being a regulator, the state-owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp reportedly operated approximately 19,900 slots alongside a collection of some 2,080 gaming tables last year via six Casino Filipino-branded properties and a chain of 33 satellite venues spread across the Philippines.

Junket value:

2018 figures denoted a 24.4% swell year-on-year in the amount of aggregated gross gaming revenues that had been generated by junket operators in the Philippines. This $998.9 million tally accounted for around 27.7% of the nation’s combined annual takings with almost 83% at $825.4 million coming from private-sector venues.

In terms of non-junket operations, the official 2018 data confirmed aggregated gross gaming revenues of $1.4 billion, which had accounted for some 40.7% of the combined total, and detailed that electronic gaming machines had captured a 31.6% market share to bring in takings of over $544.3 million.

Fourth-quarter improvement:

For the final three months of 2018, the figures from the regulator showed that aggregated gross gaming revenues had swelled by 26.7% year-on-year to reach over $957.9 million as the trio of integrated casino resorts in the nation’s Entertainment City district posted a comparable boost of 35.4% to exceed $736.9 million.