Gambling industry losses are inevitable in 2020
The COVID-19 coronavirus is making serious adjustments to the development of global gambling. According to representatives of the company H2 Gambling Capital, the volume of this industry will seriously decrease this year. According to preliminary forecasts, the decline will be at least 8%. The worst-case scenario provides for even more significant losses. However, analysts are hoping that this will not happen, as scientists around the world are intensively creating a vaccine against the new disease.
Today, the new epidemic has already had a serious impact on the gambling industry market in Asia and some other regions. Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Italy, etc.. Due to the restrictions and quarantines that are announced in many countries, the attendance of casinos and gaming clubs is rapidly declining. Accordingly, the profits of operators and owners of land-based establishments are falling.
At the same time, online gambling, on the contrary, receives an additional incentive for growth. However, its growth is not as significant as operators of virtual establishments would like. At the end of 2019, its share was about 13.5%. Today, it has grown slightly and is approximately 14.7%. The indicators have not grown significantly, however, if the WHO declares a pandemic and the coronavirus continues to spread, the share of online gambling may be 15% in the coming month and even more in the future.
Let us recall that Following the brief closure of Macau's casinos in early February, the region's industry revenues fell by 90%, if we compare them with the same period of the previous year. In figures, this is about 385 million dollars against more than 3 billion dollars. Apparently, such serious losses of the gambling industry tycoons led to the fact that the quarantine in this province of China did not last long, and gambling establishments were reopened, thanks to lobbying of the interests of the owners of gambling establishments. However, there were significantly fewer visitors to them, as customers are afraid to visit public places in the country, in which there is a dangerous coronavirus.
