It’s a well-established fact that 2019 hasn’t lived up to expectations in Macau’s casino scene. Overall, gross gaming revenue (GGR) has been flat compared to last year, which is another way of saying the market has been extremely soft, and the extended picture is beginning to look bleak, as well. If there was hope that an end-of-year push could help stop the hemorrhaging in 2019, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen and November is on track to see the biggest dip of the year.

Analysts with Nomura Instinet released an update on Macau’s gaming activity yesterday, asserting that protests taking place in Hong Kong are definitely impacting the city’s casinos. The extent to which the protests affect GGR, however, isn’t precisely known.

Both Nomura and Sanford C. Bernstein acknowledge the protests as a factor, but believe that the overall stance of Chinese consumers, which is weaker than last year, is playing a bigger role. Other factors include currency exchanges and Sanford Bernstein analysts explain, “Aside from a softer China economy, several other factors continue to create headwinds to GGR. Continued weakness in China’s currency poses weakness to GGR growth. Historically, there has been some correlation between GGR and the renminbi/Hong Kong dollar and U.S. dollar foreign exchange rate.”

So far this year, August recorded the biggest year-on-year drop when the local gambling market saw GGR of $3.01 billion, a decline of 8.6%. Based on what has been seen so far for November, the GGR could be as low as $2.77 billion, which would be around 9% lower than a year ago.