The Baccarat card game continues to be the game of choice for most casino patrons in Macau, generating a Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) of 29.1 billion patacas in the first quarter (Q1) of this year. The figure represents 84.1% of all GGR from Q1 which has reached, according to official statistics from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), as much as 34.6 billion patacas.
Although Baccarat was always the game of preference in Macau with its revenues surpassing any other games by far, currently, and breaking the pattern of the recent past, the share of the game belonging to the so-called mass market is much larger than that of the VIP market, which has been lagging behind since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of the 29.1 billion patacas generated by the game, the mass market generated a share of 70.5% (20.51 billion patacas). This is more than twice the VIP share, which, although also showing a significant recovery, has for the time being only accounted for 8.57 billion patacas of the total accumulated GGR.
To recall, the figure for Q1 2023 is only 15.6% shy of the total GGR for VIP Baccarat in 2022 (10.15 billion patacas).
The first time that the share of VIP Baccarat dipped below the share for mass Baccarat was in 2020, when the VIP generated 26.28 billion patacas compared to the 26.94 billion patacas of the mass market share.
The popularity of Baccarat is not limited to Macau but also extends to other markets where the game used to be less popular. Experts believe that the rise in the game’s popularity is due to the fact that the house, represented by the banker, has less of a competitive edge compared to other casino card games.
By comparison, the second most popular casino game in Macau after Baccarat is Slot Machines, returning a GGR of just 2.45 billion patacas in Q1: a figure that represents only 8.4% of the revenue of Baccarat and 7.1% of the total GGR of all casino games over the same period.
