The global coronavirus pandemic has inflicted a serious blow to all of the industries in the world. Online sports betting is not in a different situation. The reason is that all of the competitions are suspended for the time being. Even though we see some rumors about competitions starting again soon, this was a pretty big blow that the industry will need some time to recover, without any doubt. All of the major competitions in the world like English Premier League, MLS, NBA, MLB, NHL, Bundes Liga, and Serie A are currently on hold. Industries like online sports betting and media not severely lack in funds that they were able to earn through these competitions.
The best approach for these industries is to try and preserve the capital they’ve accumulated over the years without spending it on unnecessary things. This makes perfect sense if you are seeing what kind of offer online betting sites are offering these days. If you are interested to take a look at some of them, you could check out Turboluck. Anyway, this is not the only effect of the global pandemic on the online sports betting industry. We’ve decided to run a research on our own and find out what are the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the online sports betting industry. After we’ve concluded it, we are going to present them to you.
The Quest of Finding Live Events
Since almost all of the sports competitions in the world are on hold, betting sites struggle to find live events that they could offer to their players. According to the study that we’ve been able to take a look at, around 75%-80% of all competitions in the world are not in motion at the moment. Without any doubt, this has a massive negative impact on the industry. However, among this 20%-25%, players could find the Belarussian Football League, which is, surprisingly, still ongoing.
We are not going to go into reasons why, but it looks like that this is the only football league in Europe that wasn’t put on hold. At the same time, betting sites are focusing on smaller sports like table tennis. According to the FSB representative, Dave McDowell, the company never thought that there wouldn’t be almost any live match available. You can imagine what kind of surprise this has been to the industry as of whole.
The Rise of Virtual Sports
Even though that bettors lack matches that they could put their bet on, virtual sports have managed to fill the void created by the coronavirus pandemic. This can be done in two ways, people can even bet on people who participate in esports or they could bet on AI that is a part of esports. We can take a look at sites that are hosted in the UK. These kinds of sites are refreshing their offer every few minutes.
So, you are bound to find something that suits players from all over the world. One of the most interesting things that we were able to witness was the virtual soccer World Cup. At the same time, we saw the Michaux Velodrome cycling competition, a virtual one of course. Naturally, it would take a long time for a good number of people to recognize them as better things to bet on than actual, real-time sports. We think that this is a trend that certainly has a future, even when this global pandemic is long gone.
Betting on Non-sport Activities
If you are regularly betting on online sites, you must know that some sites are offering betting on many other things besides sports. For example, every year, we have the odds on what movie will win the Oscar out of nominated ones. At the same time, for every election, online sites are offering odds for every candidate and every party. We can see that they have similar types on these like we can see on sports, like what percentage will a certain party win at elections.
This is something that became highly popular during the coronavirus pandemic. Some of the sites are offering a possibility to bet on social issues or climate. Maybe this sounds silly, but it certainly provides some results since they offer it in the first place. At the same time, some of the sites that are known for being sport betting changed their modus operandi to online poker, roulette, and other games typical for online casinos. Certainly, they’ve managed to fill the void caused by the pandemic.
The Decline of Old-school Betting – The End of the Tunnel
Using smartphones or laptop is the commonest way of betting nowadays, which is obvious if you take a look around yourself, or when you take a look at some studies. At the same time, old-school betting is still at large. When we say old-school betting, we mean people who directly go to the legal bookie and place a bet. This is something that is present for the last centuries or two, and it is unlikely that it will cease to exist soon.
However, with the global pandemic and the advice from the medicinal staff from all over the world that social distancing is an absolute must in order to prevent it, you can be sure that online betting is going to be even more popular in the future. This will only mean that the industry will have many more players and revenue than it had before this occurrence. Without any doubt, this is something that we can expect in the future.
The Bottom Line
With the current situation we’re at now, there are not almost any kinds of sports that you could bet on. This doesn’t mean that the industry doesn’t have something under their sleeve. While the financial loss of the industry is going to be calculated for many years to come, the online sports betting sites have managed to find solutions to prevent further decline. The end of the tunnel is at hand. This can be seen if you take a look at the final effect of the coronavirus pandemic, we presented to you. It looks like the industry, even though severely hurt financially, is going to finish with a boom when it comes to the number of new players.
