Despite all of the struggles found by many throughout 2020 and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, there are some industries that were able to thrive throughout. One of those in particular has been within online casinos and online gambling – early on many turned towards online gambling as an alternative for betting when sporting events found cancellations and provided a new outlet for many players, but as the year went on it started to appear as if the change for many was a little more permanent as gaming as a whole continued to thrive.
It appears as if 2021 may be following a similar path for many of these online services too – whilst there have been suggestions that many players who have adjusted to a more online focussed list of services whilst offline locations remain closed, the start of the year has already triggered a number of lockdowns in certain countries that could extend in to the spring with certain sporting events already suggesting that it’s almost inevitable that future postponements and cancellations will be needed, it follows the path of what happened in 2020.
Back in August it had been suggested that traffic for Canadian online casinos had doubled during lockdown efforts and these cancellations, and whilst the numbers may not be so drastic the second time round they will certainly still increase – with many operators discovering the benefits found during this period of time too, newer services are popping up every day as sites such as ManySpins.com have become a popular destination for players, and in the face of newer lockdown restrictions many who may have put the games to one side could likely be returning back to them.
That isn’t to say that there won’t be efforts to temper the growth however – last year many different countries had measures in place in order to slow the growth with blocks on advertising for gambling services as well as restrictions and limits on things like deposits – it had been suggested that the past few years have seen a growing online gambling pandemic and that the current period has fueled this further and seeing how strong the gambling market was last year it may encourage further measures to be placed to slow the growth once again and to ensure those most at risk aren’t being taken advantage of by the growing presence of these online services.
There may also be a more permanent change, many regular players may be a bit more hesitant to return to brick-and-mortar locations whilst the pandemic risk continues to exist alongside the locations that won’t be able to re-open once all of this ends, and this only serves to further help the growing presence online services are having, and will likely continue have well in to the future.