A December survey of premium mass players at Macau casinos by Citi Research recorded about 11% more “whales,” or high-stakes gamblers, compared with November.
The December survey revealed 20 “whales” with bet sizes above HK$100,000 ($12,818), compared with 18 observed the previous month.
“Players appear to be much less worried about the current state of China’s economy and the recent surge in respiratory diseases than investors, and they are still showing resilient luxury spending behavior,” analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheng wrote.
What Citi named “The Player of the Month” was a 610,000 Hong Kong dollar bet at the Horizon Room of the Galaxy Macau resort in Cotai. The other four whales were betting between 150,000 and 210,000 Hong Kong dollars. “We also encountered several players across Macau with a chip stack north of 1 million Hong Kong dollars,” the analysts said.
In this December survey, the average minimum bet across Macau was HK$2,064, about 12% higher than the December 2019 survey figure of HK$1,834.
In a dozen monthly surveys since Citi’s Macau “reopening” in January this year, which are understood to be related to the lifting of COVID-19-related travel restrictions, the agency found that the average premium masswalker per athlete was 22% to 94% higher than in the same month in 2019.
The structure of Macau’s gambling market has also changed since 2019, according to data from the Game Inspection Coordination Bureau, the city’s casino regulator.
In the third quarter of this year, VIP baccarat – a game chosen by Macau’s big-money owners, whether directly run by casino operators or issue credit cards with junk food – accounted for just 24.1% of Macau’s total gaming revenue (GGR). In the third quarter of 2019, VIP baccarat, described by analysts at the time as mostly coming from junk food (a much smaller segment now), accounted for 43.9% of the total GGR.
BY: 파워볼사이트