Macau poised for unprecedented rebound post-pandemic: Casino giants

Casino giants are expecting Macau to record an unprecedented market rebound once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

In an interview with American business media CNBC, CEOs of Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts have expressed full confidence in the possible pent-up demand in the city once the outbreak has subsided.

According to them, “Macau has got it’s best days coming.” 

Severe Covid restrictions have prevented any kind of market rebound in the second quarter this year. 

Since April, Macau has been registering a downturn in casino revenues, recording its worst revenue in June since September 2020. 

For Rob Goldstein, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, Macau is geared towards a bright future amid this tough time. 

“You’ve got to basically hunker down and wait for it to turn,” said the boss of Sands China’s parent company during a round-table discussion. 

“As [Winston] Churchill said, when you’re going through hell, keep walking. This is hell,” he added.

Just this week, the local gaming operator announced that it has entered into a loan agreement

With LVS, totaling USD1 billion and repayable on July 11, 2028. 

The loan is said to be indicative of the companies’ confidence in Macau’s future growth potential.

Meanwhile, Bill Hornbuckle, CEO and president of MGM Resorts, confident that Macau “will forever be” the largest gaming market in the world, recalled that pre-pandemic, “Macau was seven to eight times Las Vegas in scale.”

Macau’s adherence to the national zero-Covid strategy has been deterring consistent recovery of the gaming market, as aside from closing its borders, it has put in place border restrictions and quarantine measures for arrivals from high-risk regions in the mainland. 

“The only thing that keeps me up at night about Macau is the state of my team.  They’ve been essentially trapped there for years. It’s very difficult and I appreciate everything they do for us,” said Craig Billings, CEO of Wynn Resorts.

Currently, all the city’s casinos have been shuttered in the race to curb the spread of Covid, the second closure since the peak of the pandemic in February 2020. 

Brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein expects that casino closures may last longer than this week, and has predicted that July gaming revenues would be 97% lower than 2019 numbers.

According to channel checks, casinos have only recorded an aggregate of MOP20 million from July 1 to July 10, an average of MOP2 million daily.