For two decades, some of the real leverage in the world's biggest casino hub did not sit with the casinos. It sat with the junkets.
They were the operators who brought the whales — the high rollers from mainland China — and who did the one thing the casinos could not easily do themselves. They moved the money. Then Macau took that function away. Not mainly through the courts, though those made the headlines, but through a law.
What was a junket?
For readers newer to the Macau story: a junket was the middleman of the VIP gambling economy. It recruited the high roller, flew him in, housed him, and — the crucial part — extended him credit, then collected the debt afterwards. In a system where mainland China caps how much money citizens can legally move across the border, the junket was the workaround: effectively a private bank for cross-border gambling. At their 2014 peak, 235 licensed junkets operated in Macau, and the VIP play they drove made up over 46% of all gaming revenue. The largest, Suncity, was run by Alvin Chau, for years one of the most influential figures in the business.
The headlines everyone saw
In 2023, that influence collapsed in the way most people remember. A Macau court convicted Chau on more than 100 counts of illegal gaming and criminal association, ruling his operation had facilitated enormous volumes of under-the-table bets. He was sentenced to 18 years. Tak Chun's Levo Chan, the second-largest operator, was sentenced to 14 years in 2023 — later reduced on appeal to 13, a term Macau's Court of Final Appeal confirmed in late 2024, alongside compensation of HK$1.83 billion (about $235 million).
The convictions were widely read as the end of the junkets. They were the visible part of the story — not the part that reshaped the business.
The law that changed the mechanics
The decisive move was regulatory: Law 7/2024, passed unanimously and in force from August 2024. It changed one thing with large consequences. Under the new regime, only the casino concessionaires — Sands, SJM, Galaxy, Wynn, MGM and Melco — may extend gaming credit. Junkets cannot.
A junket can still introduce a player and handle paperwork as the casino's agent, but the money lent now belongs to the concessionaire, not the junket. If a client wants credit, the junket can only refer him to the concessionaire, who must then re-approve him. As one junket representative put it to Inside Asian Gaming, that raises the obvious question of why the client would still need the junket at all.
That is the mechanism in a sentence. Once a middleman no longer controls the money, his role narrows from financier to introducer.
The survivors
The junkets did not disappear — that is what the "extinction" framing got wrong. Around 31 are licensed in Macau today, though industry figures suggest only about 20 actively operate. But they function differently now. No longer able to extend credit, barred from running their own VIP rooms, prohibited from revenue-sharing and capped at a fixed 1.25% commission, they have shifted from principals to intermediaries. The regulator even fixes how many each casino may work with — 12 each for Sands and SJM, 8 each for MGM and Melco, 5 each for Galaxy and Wynn, against an industry-wide cap of 50.
For the casinos, the numbers moved in their favour. VIP revenue has fallen to under 30% of the total, mass-market play now drives growth, and operators generate comparable revenue while paying far less in commission. SJM's commission costs, for example, fell from around 20% of gaming revenue in 2019 to roughly 5–7% by 2024. Macau came through the decline of the junket more profitable than before.
Where the model went
What is left is the question of where the old model went — because it did not simply end. The junket system Macau dismantled has, by multiple accounts, migrated: operators and the credit-and-collection model they relied on have moved toward less tightly regulated markets across the region. We looked at one of those markets in the last issue. It is not the only one.
Macau did not end the junkets. It redefined what they are allowed to be — and the parts of the old business that did not fit the new rules went looking for somewhere that still allowed them.
We track how money, players and regulation move across East Asia's gaming markets — including the parts that don't show up in the official figures. If that's your world, reply. The best context usually comes from comparing notes.
Web eastasiareports.com · Email [email protected] · LinkedIn East Asia Reports · Author Adrià Mas