We’ve seen some business success, and some cautionary tales throughout the spread of the coronavirus – despite changes in regulation such as the gamstop initiative in the UK, online casinos have been one of these success stories, the scheme had recently been made mandatory making it more difficult for UK players to access many sites but operators are moving offshore, these found at Maximum Casinos are available to players all over and have been a big boon to the industry during this period of time – but there are those in a similar sector that may not being doing so hot.
We’ve recently seen the reopening of Vegas, being the first big offline gambling hub to do so, and seemingly to great success at first – there are plenty of videos showing packed atriums as they walk through hotels and casinos, showing just how busy they were. But they have now been met with controversy – nearly two weeks to the day following the opening of casinos across Vegas, the state found the highest single day rise in new COVID-19 cases since May, and that daily high has been increasing day on day – as of now, these locations will be remaining open following the medical guidance and plan that has been laid out, but there are growing fears that if numbers do continue to grow that the five phase plan to recovery could move back a few steps, which would lead to many of these locations having to close again until numbers fall more back into line with what they were before, and likely some changing guidelines too.
This has caused a change in requirement – following the reopening, it was only mandatory for employees of the casinos and hotels to wear masks, alongside the other protections that were in place such as dividers at tables, but following this increase it is now mandatory for guests to also wear masks and adhere to social distancing where possible – but this shift may damage future travel. It had been suggested that domestic visitors made up around 50% of Vegas visitors, enough to sustain and keep these places afloat but in order to continue growing there is still the reliance on international travel – with these growing numbers active cases, the likelihood that international travel can take place again may seem a little iffy at best.
This does spell some more great news for the online casinos, however, as they have been performing extremely well throughout this period of time. Numbers of newer players are expected to accelerate despite changes to prevent growth, and if changes continue to happen to these casinos forcing them to close again, many players will return to the online alternatives and may be a little tentative to return to offline locations until more is done to ensure that a second or third wave of infection can’t spread again – now may be a pivotal point for online casinos, and for offline casino travel, and could determine what the coming months may look like.