The belief that high rollers carry an Asian casino’s revenue is out of date at most properties, and Okada Manila’s third quarter shows it plainly. Mass-market table games produced PHP3.01bn (US$47.8m), up 20 per cent year on year, while VIP table games brought in US$18m, down 21.4 per cent, according to figures from owner Tiger Resorts reported by G3 Newswire. That split, mass gaming vs VIP gambling moving in opposite directions, is the defining pattern in Asian land-based gaming right now.
What the split does not prove is the conclusion most coverage jumps to: that mass growth is quietly replacing the VIP business. In the same release, group EBITDA is down 47 per cent across nine months. Those two facts sit in the same company and they do not resolve each other.
Mass market vs VIP gambling: the basic difference
The two segments differ in bet size, in how the player is sourced, in how revenue is measured and in who carries the credit risk. Everything else follows from those four things.
What counts as mass market play
Mass market is walk-in play: hotel guests, locals, tour groups and day visitors betting from their own funds at published table minimums or on slot machines. The casino measures it through drop, the value of cash and chips exchanged at the table, and keeps a hold percentage of that drop as revenue. There is no commission to pay a middleman and no credit to chase, so a larger share of each peso wagered reaches the operating line.
What counts as VIP or high-roller play
VIP play is premium baccarat at high limits, usually in private salons, often financed by a credit line and historically sourced through junket operators. A junket operator is an intermediary that recruits high rollers, extends and collects their credit, handles cross-border funds movement and takes a commission or a share of rolling chip volume in return. VIP turnover is counted in rolling chip volume rather than drop, and the conventional industry assumption is that the house wins somewhere around 3 per cent of that volume over time. Enormous turnover, thin theoretical margin, and after commissions and bad debt provisions, thinner still.
| Dimension | Mass market | VIP |
|---|---|---|
| Typical stake | Table minimums, slot spins | High-limit baccarat, large repeat bets |
| Player sourcing | Direct: hotel, local, tourism | Junkets or direct VIP hosting |
| Volume measure | Table drop, slot handle | Rolling chip volume |
| Margin profile | Higher retained margin per unit wagered | Thin after commissions and rebates |
| Main risk | Visitation and macro demand | Credit, collection, counterparty, regulation |
| Funding | Player’s own money | Frequently extended credit |
What Okada Manila’s third quarter actually reported
Group gross gaming revenue rose 0.9 per cent year on year in the third quarter, with the growth concentrated entirely in mass tables. Mass table revenue was PHP3.01bn (US$47.8m), up 20 per cent. Mass table drop rose 5.4 per cent to US$143m. VIP table revenue fell 21.4 per cent to US$18m. Slot revenue fell 4 per cent to US$45.8m. Over the nine-month period, EBITDA fell 47 per cent.
Read those lines together and the headline growth number almost disappears. A 0.9 per cent GGR increase means the mass gain and the VIP and slot declines nearly cancelled each other out. VIP table revenue is now roughly a quarter of what mass tables deliver at this property.
How to read a mass versus VIP split without over-reading it
Three checks separate a genuine segment shift from a quarter that merely looks like one. Run them in order on any Asian casino’s results.
- Compare revenue growth with volume growth. At Okada Manila, mass table revenue rose 20 per cent while drop rose 5.4 per cent. Revenue growing roughly four times faster than volume means the hold percentage improved, and hold moves with luck as well as with game mix and table yield management. Implied hold on mass tables works out near a third of drop this quarter against under 30 per cent a year earlier. Part of that is business; part of it is variance, and nothing in the release tells you the ratio.
- Check which currency each growth rate is calculated in. The mass table figure is stated in pesos with a dollar conversion attached, while the drop figure is quoted in dollars. Comparing a peso growth rate against a dollar growth rate smuggles the exchange rate into the analysis. The direction of travel survives this; the precise magnitude does not.
- Test the revenue story against the profit line. This is where the Okada numbers stop cooperating with the tidy narrative. If mass is structurally higher margin and mass revenue is up 20 per cent, a 47 per cent nine-month EBITDA decline needs explaining. The release does not break out what drove it, and I am not going to attribute it to VIP alone. Period mismatch matters too: the segment figures cover one quarter, the EBITDA figure covers nine months. The honest statement is that mass growth has not yet offset whatever is happening below the revenue line, and the published numbers do not say why.
Why high-roller gambling is under structural pressure
VIP softness across Asia traces mostly to the supply side: the machinery that delivered high rollers to regional casinos was dismantled, and it has not been rebuilt.
The junket operator decline
Macau’s crackdown on gaming promoters from late 2021 removed the sector’s dominant VIP distribution network, and the effect spread well beyond Macau because the same operators fed satellite markets including the Philippines. Macau’s gaming regulator publishes a list of licensed gaming promoters each year, and that list is now a fraction of its pre-2020 length, a reduction readers can verify directly against the regulator’s own filings. Casinos that relied on junket-sourced turnover lost both the recruitment channel and the credit underwriting that came with it.
Credit and regulatory headwinds
What replaced junket credit is a much more cautious posture. Operators extending credit directly now carry the collection risk themselves, and in most Asian jurisdictions gaming debt is difficult to enforce across borders. Add anti-money-laundering scrutiny over large cross-border transfers, mainland China’s restrictions on capital movement and its campaign against cross-border gambling promotion, and the practical cost of serving a single foreign high roller has risen sharply. Regional regulators, PAGCOR included, have tightened oversight of casino credit and source-of-funds checks over the same period. Those are documented policy shifts rather than estimates, and the sensible framing is risk management, not lost glamour: a credit line is a debt instrument, and the party issuing it eats the loss when it goes bad.
This is why the pressure is industry-wide rather than specific to one property. Okada Manila did not lose a junket relationship or a marketing argument. The category it was selling into contracted.
Why mass market is becoming the growth engine in casino industry trends
Mass market play is steadier because it is funded by the player, sourced by the property and settled on the spot. There is no commission, no rebate on turnover, no receivable and no counterparty whose licence can be withdrawn. Volume tracks visitation, hotel occupancy and local demand, which move slowly and can be influenced by things the operator controls directly.
Okada Manila’s own quarter illustrates both halves of the argument. Mass tables were the only line that grew, and they grew enough to hold group GGR marginally positive against a 21.4 per cent VIP fall and a 4 per cent slot decline. That is resilience. It is also, on these figures, not yet enough to rebuild profitability.
How operators are rebuilding the VIP casino programme
The clearest adaptation is the premium mass segment: players who bet well above standard table minimums, receive hosted service, suites and rebates, but play with their own money and are recruited directly by the property rather than through an intermediary. It captures much of the spend-per-visitor benefit of VIP without the credit exposure or the regulatory tail risk.
Alongside that, loyalty programmes have been rebuilt around identified, tracked play across gaming, hotel, food and entertainment, which lets an operator value a customer on total property spend rather than rolling chip volume alone. Credit, where it is still offered, is tighter and more selective. Any property that markets to high-value players is also expected to pair that with visible responsible gambling tooling, including deposit and loss limits, self-exclusion and reality checks, since the same intensity of play that makes a customer valuable is what makes harm screening necessary.
What the split signals from here
Okada Manila’s quarter is best read as a revenue mix changing faster than the cost base behind it. Mass gaming vs VIP gambling is no longer a balance that operators choose between; VIP supply contracted and mass became the default. The open question, and the Tiger Resorts figures genuinely do not answer it, is whether a mass-led, premium-mass-supported model can carry the fixed costs of integrated resorts that were sized and financed in the junket era. Watch drop rather than revenue, and watch EBITDA rather than GGR. Those are the lines where the answer will show up first.
