Casino Revenue During Covid-19 – Did Casino Players Win Big During Covid-19

The coronavirus pandemic had an unprecedented impact on lives worldwide. During this time, there wasn’t a single person on earth that didn’t know or was affected by the virus, which led to a global, economic standstill.

To lower the severity of this crisis, the UK introduce specific measures to curb transmission rates. There were many different rules. For the gambling industry, the primary and most impactful were the cancellation of live sports events and the closure of land-based gambling venues.

Like many other industries, the gambling sector needed to adapt fast to survive. Unsurprisingly, many went the online route, as this couldn’t get touched by social distancing or quarantine regulations.

Despite the sector getting hit extremely hard by this pandemic, they didn’t do too bad. To learn more about how they did during this time, see the below:

Casino revenue during Covid-19 

At one point, we all thought covid-19 would be here forever. Nowadays, it’s become less spoken about, regulated, etc. However, there’s still been life-long lifestyle changes for many.

One of the changes has been for gamblers. Before the pandemic, many choose to place bets in bookies, casinos, and other land-based gambling locations. But with these closing down momentarily, many had to change the way they placed bets.

How did covid impact user behaviour? 

As you can imagine, the industry needed to adapt to this new locked-in era. To achieve this, many businesses in the sector flocked to the web to maintain their revenue.

A very detailed study funded by Public Health England looked into several worldwide studies relating to gambling and covid-19. After reviewing the document, many interesting facts and statistics were unknown to the eye without comprehensive research.

Upon reviewing, we were surprised to see that the studies showed consistent evidence of a reduction in gambling in the initial stages of the pandemic. The reasons for this are unknown, but we can imagine it’s largely to do with live sports being cancelled and people being sceptical of online betting.

Several of the studies they reviewed report a decrease in online betting as we head through the pandemic. However, other studies contradict this because they saw an increase in online betting.

In the studies that reported an increase in online gambling, they mention that the main contributions were attributed to boredom and extra free time caused by furlough. Therefore, it seems like people didn’t want to gamble, but they had nothing else to do.

With the studies that mentioned a significant increase in users, we also have another piece of data that backs the statement further. An online gambling self-exclusion tool called GamStop experienced a 28% increase in registrations between the height of the pandemic (2020 and 2021).

As a result, it could suggest that there were new or pre-existing gamblers who started betting on the new era of online bookies and casinos.

Did this impact gambling revenue? 

Throughout this post, we discussed that the gambling sector started to push towards online as land-based bookies and casinos were required to shut down. However, did this impact the gambling industry’s revenue?

Unsurprisingly, online casinos managed to pick up a large chunk of revenue compared to their land-based counterparts, as reports suggest by HM Revenue & Customs and UK Gambling Commission.

However, the industry as a whole did dip between 2020 and 2021. Although the UK Gambling Commission only has numbers dating as far back as September 2020, when the data has merged, it indicates that there was a 15% drop in GGY compared to previous years.

To back this further, HM Revenue and Customs also reported a 6% decrease in the fiscal year that ended in March 2021. Therefore, although online gamblers increased, the industry didn’t feel its full effect.

The reason for this drop wasn’t only because of land-based casinos shutting. Instead, this was mainly because of high-profile sporting events getting cancelled.

Additionally, with the increase of users becoming more gambling-aware, more people were registering to GamStop (as mentioned above). However, we can’t imagine this impacting the industry as a whole because more non-Gamstop casinos and offshore options have started to become popular.

What does the future hold? 

What’s discussed above does offer a measure of hope for those in the industry.

Instead of having land-based bookies and casinos reeking in a large amount of revenue yearly, they’ve now diversified their revenue options by introducing people to the world of online gambling.

Although we’d love to say that brick-and-mortar casinos will start becoming increasingly popular again, we can’t be sure. People have changed during the pandemic, and many have adopted this new era of online communication.

Therefore, if we had to predict the future of land-based gambling locations and online, we’d have to say that online could be a much more favourable place for users.

Rightfully, it has everything. Whether you want to play on casinos that are not on Gamstop, Gamstop regulated ones, crypto, offshore, etc., there are just so much more options available for online gamblers.

Did this have an impact on gamblers winning big? 

Now with the fluctuation of new and old players joining the gambling world via the easier online accessibility, many have wondered whether people are winning bigger on these platforms.

But why have people been thinking this?

With online casinos and bookies popping up everywhere, non-Gamstop casinos or not, the advertising spend online has increased tenfold.

With social media and influencers being incredibly popular around the covid period and after, many gambling businesses took this as an opportunity to start advertising their platform.

Here, they’d get large YouTubers, streamers or even celebrities to start playing on their online casino and sharing the experience with their audience.

Although nobody knew this, audiences worldwide loved it and started joining in on the fun. As a result, there have been more recorded evidence of people winning big, especially on live streaming platforms like Twitch.

Without question, it’s hard to tell who’s won the biggest, we can certainly suggest that these following twitch streamers won big during the pandemic.

MircleQ

A Twitch streamer who’s called MircleQ won big during the pandemic. On the platform PokerStars (which isn’t a non-gamstop casino), MircleQ was playing the Spin & Go jackpot.

PokerStars has a unique twist on this game and makes tournaments that get played remarkably fast, where winning big can happen quickly.

When the Russian streamer decided to play this game for as little as $100, he triggered an x12,000 multiplier which netted him a cool $1.2 million. He wasn’t the only person to do this. Also, a player named tagil94 reported having a similar win, but it wasn’t recorded on live video.

Roshtein

Twitch username Roshtein or real name Ismael Swatz, also won big during the 2021 pandemic. The Swedish-based gambling streamer does describe himself as a casino philosopher and has won big several times live.

The streamer is always playing live gambling games, making sure that each win is recorded. In April 2021, he unexpectedly hit a million-dollar prize pool on the Nolimit City slot Book of Shadows.

If you’re looking for casinos that are not on GamStop, Nolimit City wouldn’t be an option. However, if you get onto the UK-based platform, you could be in for a treat, just like Roshtein.

AndyPyro 

Undoubtedly, there has been an outrageous number of online casino slot wins. Another streamer that netted a huge amount of money during the pandemic from gambling was AndyPyro.

Like the above, AndyPyro was playing on Nolimit City. The game he was placing bets on was Fire in the Hole, which gave him $240,000 after getting an x60,000 multiplier (the highest multiplier possible).

Without question, all the streamers mentioned won an incredible amount of money, which is life-changing for many. However, we can’t answer the primary question, “did players win big during covid-19”.

The confusion of people winning big or more is solely because of online betting. When people primarily used land-based casinos or bookies, anybody rarely recorded videos there as many places didn’t allow it.

However, with online, people love recording their own gameplay and either streaming it or making videos for a platform like YouTube. Because we’re in this sort of video-sharing era, it may seem like a large majority of people are winning big, but you don’t see the losses behind them.

After all, what makes for a more interesting video – Somebody losing continuously or someone winning an unnormal amount of money? We certainly know what we’d pick, and we’re sure you’re too.

Conclusion 

After reading the above, you should comprehensively understand the casino industry’s revenue and user winnings during the covid-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, there has been a large online adoption, which many people have started to love.

However, despite this, they did see a decrease in revenue during these years, which wasn’t too unexpected. But with people becoming more financially stable again, we can expect more people to flock toward online gambling once and a while.

Now you know this, what do you think of the UK gambling industry? Do you think people are winning more than usual?