Whilst online gambling has been growing by a huge margin with operators launching new services and new legislation has been passing to enable different states and different countries to succeed, questions have been rising around the traditional brick-and-mortar locations and how they may look to perform following the onset of temporary closures and re-opening procedures too. Figures have been rolling in since grand re-openings, and offline gambling looks to break prior records as casino floors fill once more with players looking for a slice of something familiar.
Early numbers had come from booking arrangements particularly for locations like Las Vegas, early in 2021 there had been growing confidence as pre-booked figures remained high and reservations were only looking to increase too showing plenty of confidence that the offline space could continue to succeed. This news came prior to some changing lockdowns which did restrict services, however, so whilst the bookings did remain in place there may have been a chance that not all guests would’ve been able to fulfil those bookings if access was still restricted for the time being.
Recovery was able to come fast though, the American Gaming Association have suggested that the gaming industry offline is very much on its way back, the second quarter of 2021 saw $13.6 billion generated from offline gaming services and a new record for the industry with the revenue from states that have legalised gambling being up 22% from the previous record and the highest grossing year in the history of legal gambling within the US – and given many different states across the US are starting to introduce new legislation for legalised online gambling and sports betting particularly aimed at mobile users too this will only look to grow heading in to 2022 too.
As expected, locations like Nevada were able to post the biggest numbers – throughout the start of the year it had been beating out records month after month with billions being collected in gambling revenue with the casino industry bouncing back – reports are starting to come out looking at the future for when a full recovery could be made with some suggestions pointing out that the Vegas Strip could have fully recovered by 2023 with other states following closely behind too. It’s a great period of time for operators looking to capitalise on the recent growth and popularity seen with all things online gaming, and despite some changes being made to regulation across different markets around the world, online gambling will continue to be bigger then it has been before.