An unprecedented pandemic has turned the whole world upside down. The cancellation of mass events, the closure of many establishments, the lockdown, and the transition of numerous services to remote work. But there is no calamity that the economy cannot cope with, and where there are no beneficiaries, even occasional ones.
For example, adventurous salesmen have made a lot of money selling medical masks and antiseptics at exorbitant prices. Much more honest and smart were the business owners who were able to transfer their products to remote work.
One of the final winners was the gambling industry. It experienced unprecedented growth during the smartphone era beginning, and it has not stopped growing, though the pace has been much slower. But the pandemic that struck the world and the closure of land-based casinos, along with the postponement and cancellation of sports events, again gave a huge boost to the growth of interest in online gambling.
According to a report by 888 Holdings, the owner of several gambling companies, the ratio of sports betting to casino betting has decreased significantly. Until March 2020, while restrictions were still minimal, the company's revenue growth was 18% year-over-year. However, in the second half of the year, despite the drop in sports betting profits, the total revenue of the two verticals, betting and casino, increased by as much as 24%.
It turns out that interest in sports has not fallen, but on the contrary, however, sports events have become less frequent, so many fans were forced to switch their interest to gambling. Moreover, the company registered a significant increase in attracting customers in B2C business, reaching 20%.
Looking at all these figures, you might think it's no big deal. But we are talking about the turnover of many tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars. And this is just one company, no matter how big. Such a dramatic effect has been caused by the mere delay of major sports events like the European Football Championship or the English Premier League. And if you extrapolate them to everything that happened in the world, you could get completely lost.
But now, from the year 2023, we can safely say that even such severe events have not been able to destroy the modern world economy, but have only given it new opportunities for development.
