The Contemporary Situation with the Betting Industry During the International Pandemic

The recent international disaster connected with the worldwide pandemic has made a severe impact on different aspects of our lives. It seems like no sphere remained untouched by the Coronavirus situation. As a result, the world has to adjust to the ever-changing conditions of its operation. The same situation happened to the gambling business, namely the betting sector.

With the introduction of global quarantine, almost all events that allowed people to place bets have been postponed or cancelled. No sport means no possibility to offer people your services that implies a complete decay of the industry. But is it really like this? The experts from Rosloto decided to explain the situation in detail. So, what is happening with betting without live sports?

The Current State of Betting

As for the beginning of April 2020, the available sports event include only a few not very popular tournaments:

• Belarus football;
• Nicaragua football;
• Russian table tennis;
• USA racing;
• Hong Kong racing;
• Australia racing.

These activities have become a saviour of content for numerous operators and service providers. A previous abundance of events of more than 400 betting possibilities a day is now reduced to only 10 at most. As a result, the overall turnover has reduced on average by 75%. Some brands have only suffered up to 30% of revenue decrease while others are barely staying afloat with drastic losses of over 95%.

The situation was particularly disastrous for the sphere-oriented bookmakers. Some websites tend to focus mainly on football, basketball, or other types of sport that are currently entirely unavailable.

Quite a similar situation happened in 2001, in the UK. Due to the foot-and-mouth disease, all horse-racing events were suspended for a significant time, and the betting sector was desperately looking for an alternative. Surprisingly, virtual sports attracted enough attention to support the bookmakers’ activity.

History tends to repeat, and now the virtual sports have been experiencing an increase of 400% on average. Previously occupying only 4% of the niche, now it is over 40%, with some brands having an uprise of up to 1200%

Some betters decided to switch to other gambling activities. Thus, the online casino market is currently experiencing a growth of 50-120% on average, with a lot of new players joining the internet gaming establishments. The live sphere is a particularly demanded trend that allowed some operators to reinforce their position on the market significantly.

The Predicted Time of Return

Since in some countries the situation has been slowly improving, we can already make assumptions on the periods when the sports events are going to resume:

• MLB — June 2020
• NHL — July 2020
• NBA — July 2020
• Tennis Majors, Wimbledon — cancelled, next in 2021
• Golf Majors, The Open — cancelled, forthcoming in 2021
• Kentucky Derby Horse Racing — September 2020
• UK Flat Horse Racing — May 2020
• Premier League — summer 2020
• Bundesliga — summer 2020
• LaLiga — late summer 2020
• Euro 2020 — postponed to summer 2021

Stakeholder Reaction

Such a mess in the modern betting world made all participants of the process have different reactions to the situation. So, let’s see what state of affairs we have for the time being.

Operators

Businessmen are trying to keep their enterprises afloat and survive until the typical workflow resumes. As a result, they implement several innovations to the betting process for the players.

1. Sourcing any new sports content possible. A lot of operators look for any available events and offer betting that wouldn’t be possible in a normal situation. Also, eSports competitions are being gradually added to the list.
2. Adding virtual sports content. Operators are adding more events from the existing suppliers as well as look for new service providers to diversify the stock. In addition, live streaming has been added for the major virtual sports.
3. Adding more casino content. It is essential to rotate your content regularly. People don’t want to see the same gambling activities available on different websites since it causes a mass reduction of revenue.
4. Saving money on advertising. On average, customer acquisition decreased by 50%. It is all because there is no point in attracting betters to the website without any sports events available.
5. Adding new reports and staff training for noticing safe gaming concerns. The existing marketing tools and report-generating systems can no longer provide relevant information due to how they are programmed. As a result, there is a need for manual check-ups on a constant basis to upkeep at least some traffic on platforms.

Suppliers

On the other hand, virtual sports and eSports services providers understand the global demand for their products and also change their behaviour.

1. Advertising. The virtual sports and eSports suppliers don’t stop offering their services to the operators due to the current state of affairs when their product has become the most demanded on the market.
2. Working hibernation. At the same time, betting services providers have lost a considerable amount of their clients for now. The result is pitiful — such companies make their employees take furloughs or even fire them due to the inability to keep the budget.
3. Safe gaming. Similarly to the operators, suppliers also had their automatic reporting systems go wrong. Numerous new additions were made to help identify the customers who may be experiencing a drastic drop in revenue.
4. Desperate attempts to create new content. Since the situation escalated so quickly, the service providers couldn’t prepare well enough to develop new content, so now they are trying hard to diversify the availability of their products.

Regulators

The situation also demanded the authorities to take action and imply new rules and additions to the existing legislation.

1. The UK Gaming Commission immediately notified the operators to be extra safe and vigilant with their gaming obligations. Also, a strict warning was made to prevent them from using any COVID-19 reference in their advertising campaigns.
2. The Spanish gambling authorities banned all advertising until April 12.
3. Nevada Gaming Commission allowed virtual NASCAR events with the subsequent betting on its results.
4. Belgium introduced ‎a €500 cap in weekly deposits.

Sports and Media

Of course, the complete change in the sporting priorities couldn’t keep some of the events untouched. The significance of the delivery of these contests to the public had the upper hand for the media. Therefore, they were also tightly involved in the rapid shift of the concerns.

1. Almost 5 million people watched the virtual Grand National. In comparison to the real event, it is half of the audience. Just incredible numbers for the virtual sport.
2. 900,000 people watched eNASCAR racing that involved pro drivers.
3. Half a million people watched virtual boxing (WBSS) that was run by two AI in a popular game EA Fight Night Champion.
4. 300,000 watched virtual F1 Bahrain GP with the participation of pro drivers and some celebrities.
5. NBA 2K20 hosting “3-on-3” events with professional players had its results leaked, and all betting was suspended.

The Comparison of the Situation around the World — East vs. West

The exciting thing that shaped up in the quarantine situation made us take a look at how different people perceive gambling. The very first example happened with the operators who tried to transfer their activities from one region to another. After the pandemic started in China and the neighbouring countries, they decided to localize their content to the western world and present it without significant changes. As it turned out, it was a perfect way to lose money.

The case is that most people in the Eastern countries gamble just to gamble. They enjoy the feeling of victory and the emotions they receive when their bet wins, their last coin becomes successful, or their combination of cards beats all others.

On the contrary, the Western audience (the UK and European countries are included), gamble to enhance the industry. A clear example of this is a betting sector, where it seems that the sporting events are impossible without people placing wagers on their favourite teams. Smart service providers totally understand this and try to adjust to it, even amid the outbreak of the strict quarantine.

The Bottom Line of the Betting Amid Quarantine

As you can see, there are betting activities that actually allow operators to stay afloat. Currently, we are approximately in the middle of the disaster, so we are only waiting for the situation to get better. Chinese quarantine has already been removed, and the country is slowly returning to its normal pace of life. As for gambling in the state, it will also soon resume its operation.

Meanwhile, Rosloto wants to pay your attention to the increased demand for online casino activities due to the situation in the world. With this in mind, you are always welcome to order our convenient turnkey business solutions to ensure your clients feel busy in the reservation. Don’t miss the opportunity to boost your enterprise or even create an entirely new profitable project from scratch. Just contact our support team and inquire about anything you might be interested in.

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